by Willy Franzen on July 27, 2008
A child’s first sign of teenage (pre-teenage?) rebellion often begins at the radio dial. The parent’s up-to-this-point unchallenged decision of what to listen to while in the car is called into question, and all hell breaks loose. If there are multiple kids in the family (or even just in the car), the negotiation can quickly becom more heated than a multi-lateral peace process in a war-torn nation. The parent will fight hard to maintain his or her right to National Public Radio, but the kid will persist in his or her challenge to hear something that feeds a suddenly “eclectic” taste in music. Often the parents cede this battle in hopes of winning in the future (bad idea!), which results in the parent’s driving the kids around the mini-van listening to rap music that would be a lot more offensive if the parent knew what some of the words meant. Eventually the rebellious tykes will grow up and realize that they too want to be more cultured, and they slowly, but surely come around to listening to NPR. Or maybe some kids just never speak up. They like NPR from the start. Maybe those are the ones who end up taking entry-level jobs at NPR.
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accounting,
analyst,
business development,
editing,
editorial,
entry-level jobs,
information technology,
journalism,
marketing,
non-profit,
production,
radio,
research,
software development,
Washington DC,
writing
by Willy Franzen on July 26, 2008
Talking about the non-profit organization that we’re featuring today provides an interesting dilemma for me. I was going to introduce them by asking you to imagine yourself in the shoes of someone like me (an entrepreneur who recently graduated college), but I realized that those who are looking for a job may not fully relate. That’s the weird thing about taking an entry-level job at the Freelancers Union. You won’t be a freelancer yourself, but you will be working to represent the “the needs of America’s independent workforce though advocacy, information, and service.”
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advocacy,
entry-level jobs,
New York,
non-profit,
union
by Willy Franzen on July 20, 2008
Hopelink is a non-profit organization that serves homeless and low income families, children, seniors and people with disabilities. Their goal is to promote self-sufficiency among these people by providing emergency and social services in:
North and East King County, Washington between the I-90 corridor to the Seattle city limits and the Snohomish County line, and from the shores of Lake Washington to the Crest of the Cascades, an area of 800 square miles.
Hopelink offers help to people in the areas of Food, Housing, Child Care, Family Development, Adult Education, Transportation, Interpreter Services, Financial Assistance, Energy Assistance, and Classes. The end result is often a story like this. That’s just one family that was touched by Hopelink – the story in numbers from just last year are awe inspiring (50,000 lives touched for starters).
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entry-level jobs,
non-profit,
outreach,
social work,
Washington
by Willy Franzen on July 19, 2008
If you’ve ever been in New York City on a 100 degree day, you know it’s not the best place for your lungs. The air is thick and hard to breathe, the smell of the streets is downright disgusting, and the only respite is when you walk by the occasional open door of an establishment that has its air conditioning pumped up to the max. It’s not a good place for a kid to spend the summer – especially if that kid has asthma or other pulmonary problems (which are much more frequent for city children). That’s why The Fresh Air Fund, a not-for-profit agency, has provided free summer vacations in the country to more than 1.7 million children from disadvantaged communities in New York City since 1877.
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entry-level jobs,
New York,
non-profit,
outreach,
public relations,
social work
by Willy Franzen on July 13, 2008
Last month we wrote about the National Association of Railroad Passengers on One Day, One Internship. They are a non-profit organization that is all about promoting the growth of transportation by rail. Today we’re going to look at jobs at the Transportation Learning Center, which is a non-profit organization that promotes all kinds of public transportation. There seems to some overlap between the objectives of these organizations, although NARP appears to be passenger driven (no pun intended), while the Transportation Learning Center’s agenda seems to be driven by transportation workers (once again, no pun intended).
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communications,
entry-level jobs,
Maryland,
non-profit,
research,
transportation
by Willy Franzen on July 12, 2008
The July after I graduated from high school, I went on a weeklong church missions trip to Washington, DC. During the trip we interacted with two distinct groups of kids. There were the “street kids” – the kids who lived in the area of the church we were staying. They were fun to be with, but you could tell that they were headed for trouble. Living completely unsupervised lives, these kids would ring the doorbell of the church in the middle of the night, use language that most adults would be embarrassed to use, and often grope the girls – not a good sign of things to come for a 4 or 5 year old kid. The second group of kids were the kids we worked with in a nursery school program. They were some of the sweetest, most polite kids that I’ve ever met. It seemed obvious that the free nursery school program for these kids was working. Still, these children faced an uncertain future. As we were leaving the school to go to a local pool to teach the kids how to swim, many of the children said what’s up to a guy standing on the street corner. I thought it was nice that there was such a sense of community for these kids, until one of the teachers told me that this guy happened to be a crack dealer. Despite this startling fact, it still seemed that these kids were headed on the right track. I don’t remember the name of the nursery school program that I worked with, but Bright Beginnings appears to be doing similar work to help provide better futures for impoverished children in the DC area.
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education,
entry-level jobs,
non-profit,
recruiting,
teaching,
Washington DC
by Willy Franzen on July 5, 2008
We hope you had a safe 4th of July. Unfortunately, every year some people don’t. Fireworks are a lot of fun, but they can result in some really nasty burns and injuries. Since we encouraged you to blow stuff up yesterday, we thought we’d counter that by featuring a non-profit organization that helps children who endure severe burns. The Shriners Hospitals for Children do exactly that. Who are Shriners? They wear funny hats. They drive little cars in parades. They’re Freemasons. And most importantly, they help kids through their hospitals. That’s going to be our focus today, since new college grads probably aren’t too interested in being part of a fraternal organization that seems like it probably has an average age north of 60. Then again, you probably got all hot and bothered about your college’s greek organizations and secret societies.
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California,
Canada,
entry-level jobs,
Hawaii,
Illinois,
international,
Kentucky,
Louisiana,
Massachusetts,
medicine,
Mexico,
Minnesota,
Missouri,
non-profit,
Ohio,
Oregon,
Pennsylvania,
South Carolina,
Texas,
Utah,
Washington
by Willy Franzen on June 29, 2008
In case you missed it in the news, Bill Gates stepped down from the helm at Microsoft on Friday. Steve Ballmer has actually been CEO of Microsoft since 2000, but now he’s really taking over as Bill Gates assumes the title of nonexecutive chairman. This means that Bill is going full time at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and maybe you should consider doing the same. With the fortune of Gates and Warren Buffett behind it, the Gates Foundation has the financial power to truly make the world a better place. Since money isn’t a problem, the Gates Foundation needs to focus on finding the right people (maybe you) and putting them on the right projects to initiate global change.
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entry-level jobs,
non-profit,
Washington
by Willy Franzen on June 28, 2008
by Willy Franzen on June 22, 2008
Almost every kid has experienced it: your parents yelling at you for something you didn’t do. They are absolutely sure that you did something wrong and there is no convincing them otherwise. It’s a horrible feeling. Now, imagine the legal system putting you in the same situation, but the consequence is a lengthy imprisonment for something you didn’t do. Tragically, this happens more often than we’d like to think. It’s likely impossible to have an effective judicial system that eliminates all false positives, but we can certainly do better. The Innocence Project is a non-profit organization that is putting DNA and forensic evidence to work to exonerate people who have been wrongly convicted.
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communications,
entry-level jobs,
law,
New York,
non-profit,
public policy,
research
by Willy Franzen on June 21, 2008
Half of the news lately has been about high gas prices. It gets tiring, since the stories never bring a new angle. Oddly enough, gas has been relatively price inelastic until recently. Prices would go up, and people would keep on driving like they did with lower gas prices. We’ve finally hit a point where people are actually cutting back on their driving because gas is so expensive. Although we haven’t done any research to back this up, we’d bet that home energy use is even less price elastic that gasoline use. Most people’s Dad’s yell at them for leaving a light on, but they don’t take serious measures to limit their home energy consumption – it takes too much effort. The Association for Energy Affordability is a New York City based non-profit that promotes energy affordability through conservation in the home.
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Tagged as:
energy,
engineering,
entry-level jobs,
green,
New York,
non-profit
by Willy Franzen on June 15, 2008
Happy Father’s Day! We were originally hoping to feature the Prostate Cancer Foundation, since the ad that they’re running called “We Need Our Dads” is pretty eye catching, but they don’t have any job openings, so we did our best to find another Dad related non-profit. We came up with the National Fatherhood Initiative, which is an organization that aims to “improve the well being of children by increasing the proportion of children growing up with involved, responsible, and committed fathers.”
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entry-level jobs,
holiday,
Maryland,
non-profit,
web development
by Willy Franzen on June 14, 2008
If you’ve been following us from the start, you know that the first non-profit organization whose jobs we featured was Save Our Wild Salmon. Today we’re going to look at jobs at the Wild Salmon Center, which has quite a few similarities to the aforementioned organization. I decided to do this for two reasons. First, I care deeply about wild salmon and like drawing attention to organizations that help them. Second, I’m leaving for a weeklong fishing trip today and it’s getting me in the mood for fishing (don’t worry, we’ll maintain our daily posting schedule). So let’s talk about how you can make a career out of protecting globally significant salmon ecosystems!
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conservation,
development,
entry-level jobs,
green,
non-profit,
Oregon
by Willy Franzen on June 8, 2008
Think about some of the reasons that you might be hesitant to give money to a non-profit organization. Somewhere on that list is probably something about not knowing where the money is going and how it will be used. You want to know that your money directly changed lives and didn’t pay for the new carpet in the organization’s headquarters. GlobalGiving is a new non-profit that aligns donors directly with projects instead of organizations.
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entry-level jobs,
non-profit,
software development,
Washington DC
by Willy Franzen on June 7, 2008
Steve Mariotti was living a successful corporate life when he decided that he needed a change. He didn’t buy a sports car, get a toupée, or start dating 20 year-olds. Ok, he could have done those things, but we have no reason to believe that he did he did. He chose to leave his job and to start teaching special education in the New York City school system. This presented obvious challenges. Teaching special ed can be hard enough in a community with extensive resources, but it must be near impossible in underserved public schools like those in New York City. Mariotti realized that one of the only ways that he could reach his students was by teaching them how to run a business. They loved the subject matter. As Mariotti developed a entrepreneurship based curriculum for his job as a special ed teacher, he realized that he could extend the reach of his educational successes. He founded the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship with the goal of bringing entrepreneurial education to low-income youth
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California,
Connecticut,
development,
education,
entrepreneurship,
entry-level jobs,
Florida,
Illinois,
Maryland,
Massachusetts,
New York,
non-profit,
Pennsylvania,
Texas,
Washington DC
by Willy Franzen on June 1, 2008
With all the hubbub about the ridiculous price of gasoline, another, more pressing price increase has been overlooked by many people. World food prices have skyrocketed as of late. On average only 14% of an American’s spending is on food, which means that we aren’t typically price sensitive when it comes to how many calories we consume (how we consume those calories is much more price sensitive). Now imagine living in a nation where the average person spends the majority of his or her income on food. If food prices go up, you must eat less. Not a good situation to be in. Freedom from Hunger is a non-profit organization that “brings innovative and sustainable self-help solutions to the fight against chronic hunger and poverty” and will hopefully be able to help people across the world cope with the increasing price of food.
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analyst,
California,
editorial,
entry-level jobs,
human resources,
microfinance,
non-profit,
research,
writing
by Willy Franzen on May 31, 2008
To many people squash is a type of fruit, but for those of privilege it is a sport played at your private racquet club. Growing up in Connecticut, I was quite familiar with the phenomenon of rich parents’ forcing their children to play squash in hopes that the kid will get recruited to play in college. The truth is that squash isn’t nearly as easy of an in to the Ivy League as people expect it to be, but that hasn’t stopped parents from signing their kids up. StreetSquash is a non-profit organization that also sees squash as a way to better the futures of young people, but in a very different way. They make squash more accessible to inner-city youths while combining “academic tutoring with squash instruction, community service, and one-on-one mentoring.”
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coaching,
education,
entry-level jobs,
New York,
non-profit,
sports,
teaching
by Willy Franzen on May 25, 2008
I grew up in suburban Connecticut, but I spent a lot time outdoors, both around my house and in more wild places. During my childhood I rarely saw deer, turkeys, coyotes, or hawks. Only a few times did I ever hear or see a woodpecker. Seeing wildlife was special. As I got older that began to change. I see all of the above relatively often now, and I swear that I hear a woodpecker banging away every day now. I definitely consider this a victory for local conservationists who have worked hard to save and bring back wildlife habitats; however, I also know that many species of flora and fauna are still in danger across the world. Conservation International is an organization whose mission statement should be “saving life on Earth.” Instead they have chosen the slightly less terse:
We believe that the Earth’s natural heritage must be maintained if future generations are to thrive spiritually, culturally, and economically. Our mission is to conserve the Earth’s living heritage – our global biodiversity – and to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature.
Either way, they’re doing great work towards helping the world balance the needs of society with nature.
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conservation,
design,
editorial,
entry-level jobs,
green,
non-profit,
project management,
training,
Virginia
by Willy Franzen on May 24, 2008
Although giving away money isn’t usually the first thing on people’s lists of things to do if they ever get rich, people who actually are rich seem to enjoy donating what they have. Since you’re reading a site about entry-level jobs, we’re going to guess that you don’t have vast financial resources to donate to charity. Still, it would be fun to give someone else’s money, now wouldn’t it? That’s what the Carnegie Corporation of New York does. The corporation was founded my Andrew Carnegie, himself, in 1911 with a $135 million. Since then the goal has been to put the money to use in ways that “promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding” for perpetuity. What is perpetuity? It’s forever. For many new college grads, making money last forever means until the next paycheck. At the Carnegie Corporation, they really mean forever. Their endowment was worth approximately $3.0 billion last year, and with a giving rate of “5.5 percent of the average market value of the endowment during the prior 12 quarters,” it’s not getting any smaller.
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education,
entry-level jobs,
foreign relations,
investment,
New York,
non-profit,
research
by Willy Franzen on May 18, 2008
Ever since we received an e-mail from a reader who was looking for help finding jobs that offer sponsorship, we’ve taken an added interest in helping international students in their job search. We published an article on job search tips for international students, and we try to make a note of it when we find jobs that offer sponsorship. Well, job search isn’t the only time international students face difficulties that most American students don’t. High school is tough enough for all of us, but international students have an even tougher time. They often face learning a new language while going through all the other typical high school struggles. The Internationals Network for Public Schools is a non-profit organization that is “dedicated to the development and support of the network of International High Schools that serve late-entry immigrant English Language Learners.”
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bilingual,
education,
fellowship programs,
international students,
New York,
non-profit,
teaching
by Willy Franzen on May 17, 2008
We’ve featured jobs at a botanical garden before, but we thought it was time to reach out to those plant science and botany majors again. It’s especially appropriate because spring is in full force at One Day, One Job Headquarters. Everything has bloomed, and not only is it beautiful here, but it also smells great. As soon as we open a door or window we’re hit with a fragrant burst of springtime. Since we hear from a lot of people that we focus too much on jobs in New York and California (hey, that’s where a lot of the jobs are), the addition of the Chicago Botanic Garden to our employer profiles should be welcome.
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biology,
botany,
education,
entry-level jobs,
Illinois,
manual labor,
non-profit,
program development,
research,
teaching
by Willy Franzen on May 11, 2008
Happy Mother’s Day! We’re not sure how many moms we have reading, but we know that there are a few out there. If you haven’t told your mom about us, why don’t you? She’d probably be thrilled to help you with your job search. We’re not sure if you’ve noticed, but we only write about non-profit jobs on the weekends, and we like to run with holiday themes. This combination provided especially troubling today, for there aren’t nearly as many Mom-related non-profits out there as you would think there are. From the ones that we could find, very few had any sort of full-time job opportunities. We persisted through our search and found the Crittenton Women’s Union, a non-profit organization in the Boston area, that “transforms the course of low-income women’s lives so that they can attain economic independence and create better futures for themselves and their families.” They turned up on an Idealist search for the word “mother,” so we’re running with it.
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entry-level jobs,
holiday,
Massachusetts,
non-profit,
program development
by Willy Franzen on May 10, 2008
I was always bad at art. From the moment I had my first art class, it was blatantly clear that I had no business using paint, clay, pencils, or crayons to express myself. This probably isn’t too unusual, except for the fact that my Dad is an Architect, my Mom is a Graphic Designer, and my sister is a Painter. Somehow the artistic genes missed me. This led to a love-hate relationship with art class. The fact that you could talk and get messy during a class was pretty neat, but it’s hard to enjoy something when it’s so obvious that you have absolutely no talent for it – especially at a young age. Still, I appreciate having had the opportunity to realize that art wasn’t for me. I had access to art supplies in school and at home, but many children in inner-city schools never even get to give art a try because the programs because funding has been cut at their schools. Inner-City Arts is a non-profit organization that provides art instruction for children who would otherwise miss out on art at their public schools.
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arts,
California,
education,
entry-level jobs,
non-profit,
teaching
by Willy Franzen on May 4, 2008
There is a constant struggle that almost all non-profits endure – it’s organizing people. Whether they are rounding up volunteers, reaching out to donors, hiring employees, or putting together a leadership team, non-profits rely on well managed groups of people to enact change. The most effective non-profits are the ones that navigate these challenges without a hitch. Many people complain that non-profits are disorganized and suffer from poor leadership, and that is often true; however, The Open Planning Project, a non-profit itself, is hoping to change that by offering a suite of online tools to help other organizations become better organized.
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entry-level jobs,
human resources,
information technology,
New York,
non-profit,
software development
by Willy Franzen on May 3, 2008
Considering that we’ve written an article about watching tv to find jobs, it shouldn’t be a surprise to you that we actually practice what we preach. We’re big fans of Top Chef and watch its new episodes every week. We like it because we learn from it, but also because it’s a reality show that rewards people for talent, not for being jerks. Although we sometimes manage to completely zone out, we do our best to pay attention and keep an eye out for entry-level job ideas. The most recent episode of Top Chef featured Common Threads, a non-profit organization that educates children on the importance of nutrition and physical well-being and fosters an appreciation of cultural diversity through cooking. We made a mental note on Wednesday night, and here we are on Saturday morning writing about them.
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entry-level jobs,
food,
Illinois,
non-profit
by Willy Franzen on April 20, 2008
We apologize in advance to the fans of the New England Patriots and the Memphis Tigers (and any other team that has recently failed in a Championship game), because this is going to be a little bit painful for you. How can a post about a “Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice” be painful? Because World Vision is an organization that has worked out deals with major sports leagues (like the NFL, whose jobs we’ve featured) to administer the donation of Championship paraphernalia that was produced for teams that didn’t win a championship. The NFL had to take a gamble on producing Super Bowl Winner t-shirts for a team that was 19-0 going into the big game. That gamble didn’t pay off for them, but it certainly did for the people who World Vision helps.
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entry-level jobs,
market,
non-profit,
project management,
Texas,
Washington,
Washington DC,
West Virginia
by Willy Franzen on April 19, 2008
When I was in college, the only studying of proteins that I did was in a class called Intro to Meat Science. Don’t believe me? Here’s the course listing. Learning how meat proteins react to salt or heat is extremely useful (and delicious) but not at all relevant to the non-profit organization that we’re featuring today (or if it is, I’ll be shocked). Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about biomedical research or cell biophysics, so all I can do is tell you a little bit about the New York Structural Biology Center and the entry-level jobs that they’re offering for new grads.
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biology,
biotechnology,
chemistry,
entry-level jobs,
New York,
non-profit,
physics,
research
by Willy Franzen on April 13, 2008
When did it become cool for companies to use the term “rock star” in reference to high potential recruits? It seems like everyone these days is looking for a rock star this, or a rock star that. At first, it was cool that employers compared top talent to those who have reached the ultimate level of fame; however, the term has lost it’s edge now that its use has become so widespread. In any case, if you think that you’re a rock star, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a place where you should fit right in.
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accounting,
education,
entry-level jobs,
museum,
music,
non-profit,
Ohio
by Willy Franzen on April 12, 2008
When I was a kid, I had a friend whose Mom refused to let him watch anything but PBS on television. Yes, he had Ghostwriter and Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego, so it wasn’t too cruel, but I still felt bad for him – the poor kid didn’t have Nickelodeon or Saturday morning cartoons. I don’t think my friend turned out any better than the kids who had access to 100 channels, but I do wish that I had spent more time watching educational programming, and less time watching reruns of Saved By the Bell over and over again. Imagine how smart I would be if the part of my brain that is irrevocably committed to remembering early 90s sitcom trivia was instead filled with something useful like what you find on the Public Broadcasting Service…
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entry-level jobs,
non-profit,
operations,
production,
software development,
Virginia
by Willy Franzen on April 6, 2008
We’ve had enough of these desk jobs! Spring is here, and we’re itching to get outside to start enjoying the improving weather. I, for one, need to get outdoors often to be happy, and I know that there are plenty of people out there who share the same feeling. In fact, many people find it hard to be their most productive when they’re inside. Unfortunately, career options become a lot more limited (especially in terms of advancement opportunities) when sitting at a desk isn’t involved. Since we love jobs that offer different types of work experiences, today, we’re going to look at a non-profit called Wilderness Inquiry, which, as an employer, is about as good as it gets for our outdoorsy readers.
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Tagged as:
entry-level jobs,
international,
nationwide,
non-profit,
outdoors
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