Jobs

Management Consulting Internship Season 1.A: Interview Executives for Market Research & Customer Discovery

Posted on: September 9, 2020 Apply Now
Internship Expires February 5, 2022

Remote / Work-from-Home Position: Unpaid Internship

Rather than the coffee-fetching and file-organizing of a typical internship, Bashpole Software, Inc. interns get hands-on experience in the nonprofit sector by participating in ongoing research via conducting one-on-one interviews of non-profit executives, learning how to recording research results in a structured way, analyzing data to uncover market opportunities, contributing to process improvement, and other potential consulting training upon your interests and skills.

Bashpole Software offers interns a rare opportunity for management consulting experience. At large consulting firms such opportunities are competitive and have long learning curves. Interns will help nonprofits get necessary publicity in these times of turmoil, helping more people through RoI analysis and strategy recommendations than could be achieved as a volunteer for any single nonprofit. These recommendations will be applied across traditional and new platforms for a variety of nonprofits, meaning the interns’ work will be used by real people in the real world. Bashpole Software, Inc. enables you to work alongside professionals in the nonprofit field and to join them in the pursuit of truth, knowledge, and how best to help the world make itself a better place.

Timeline:

This internship is the first of a three-part series of training for business consulting that leads to definite positive impact for charities that interest you and even potential employment with Bashpole Software.

For internships, a “season” means one of summer, fall/winter, or winter/spring. It varies depending on the timeline (semesters/trimesters/quarters) your college follows, and internship begin and end dates vary likewise. Generally, a full-time internship lasts for at least 3 months, and a part-time internship lasts for at least 5 months, no matter the season.

People can apply to skip Season 1 if they have an exceptional background and experience already. Interns wanting to move to Season 3 must have done a Season 2 internship in advance.

Note: do not apply for more than one internship position at a time. Pick the one that interests you the most, apply for it, and then if you are invited for an interview, mention your interest in the other positions at that time.

A Unique and Valuable Experience:

Your name can be on authored projects that have the potential to be published to hundreds of thousands of nonprofit executives. This means a chance to be publicly and professionally recognized for your contributions.

  • We support creating opportunities for leadership. As an intern, you’ll be encouraged to lead projects and goals that suit your interests. This encouragement extends to potential management training.
  • You will work either collaboratively in a team or independently on a project of your choice from a list that we will provide.
  • In weekly team meetings, you will be guided by Bashpole employees who have from 10 to 20 years or more of relevant work experience.

Bashpole supports networking opportunities by helping you to learn how to effectively communicate with executives. Build lasting impressions and have direct interactions with executive directors in a wide range of nonprofit organizations varying by size, location, and mission.

  • Potentially, this high-powered networking could lead to future employment and business connections with nonprofit professionals long after your internship.

With approval from management, this internship also offers opportunities for you to add examples to your professional portfolio, which you can later use for future job applications. Moreover:

  • Need work study or school-credit for the internship? We can support this.
  • We also encourage students to apply for scholarships for participating in our internship.

Training Beyond the Core Subject:

Our rules-of-thumb (RoT’s) training process is part of Bashpole’s ongoing effort to provide a positive and collaborative environment for all its employees. The RoT’s are the otherwise unwritten rules of professional culture and etiquette straight from an industry professional. We’ve developed a system for expressly teaching these rules and procedures to our employees.

  • This experience, and the valuable lessons you learn, will be of use to you throughout your whole career. Much of this comes directly from our founder, with whom you’ll work often during the internship experience.
  • Bashpole’s company culture is a supportive, motivated, and collaborative environment for all levels of employment that isn’t based upon strict workplace hierarchies. With the projects you work on, and the people you regularly work with, you can establish a cooperative and productive relationship with anyone at any place on the corporate ladder.
  • This isn’t a “busy work” internship. The work Bashpole does, and you’ll be contributing to, affects the nonprofit world and will result in real applicable experience.

About Us:

Bashpole Software, Inc. has been in business since 2006 with the mission to develop technology to better the world. Our services include applied research and development, nonprofit marketing, sponsorship opportunities for businesses, and data services. Your research will be with real data on real projects that we will put to real use in short order for our customers and partner organizations. This allows you to have a larger impact than if working with a single nonprofit or government organization alone.

Bashpole has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Initiative (DARPA), and the sales of services to nonprofits. For more information, please visit https://bashpolesoftware.com/.

Responsibilities:

  • Learn a methodology for uncovering challenges that a potential market experiences and does not yet have a good solution for
  • Conduct informational interviews with non-profit leaders to learn how fundraising and publicity practices change over time
  • Work on RoI analysis for different nonprofits each season
  • Participate in a remote-learning environment, assisting nonprofits during the COVID pandemic with advertising their causes
  • Build a strong network with other interns while socially distanced
  • choose their own nonprofits, allowing for flexibility in their scheduling and decision-making
  • Attend regular meetings to prevent isolation and facilitate regular collaboration

Preferred Skills to Have and Develop:

  • Write and speak to nonprofit executives
  • Schedule, conduct, and follow-up on interviews as primary research in a prompt and reliable fashion
  • Deepen a genuine interest in the nonprofit sector and discover better ways that organizations can communicate with the public
  • Work remotely in both a team and individually
  • Connect with both your coworkers and interview subjects with a positive personality and sense of humor
  • Challenge your own assumptions and think creatively

Internship Parameters:

  • Be generally available for meetings during business hours – we have team and individual meetings every week via Google Meet and similar online conferencing software
  • Flexible daily start and stop times
  • For internships taken during the fall or spring, work on average 2-4 hours a day or 10-20 hours per week. For internships during the summer, work on average of 8 hours a day or 40 hours per week.
  • Bashpole expects interns to manage their individual schedules.
  • Internship begin and end dates are flexible according to your university’s calendar for classes

It is expected that interns start ASAP and continue to the end of the school term for each season. Internship participation over multiple seasons is preferred, but not required.

Internship Benefits:

You’ll be trained how to reach and interact with important executives, how to collect unbiased information, how to manage large numbers of parallel efforts efficiently using technology, how to think about best practices in nonprofit communications, how to identify market opportunities, and how to grow one’s network of professional contacts. You will network and build a professional rapport with nonprofit executives and acquire skills essential to developing their own company, whatever the sector; but especially for the nonprofit sector’s technology usage and needs.

Interns will partner with helpful, friendly teammates from many universities and a variety of backgrounds. Please read the Company Culture to see the experience past interns had with us. These networking interns perform can lead to lifelong professional and personal connections. Interns will be given unique soft skills training called the “Rules of Thumb” (RoT) and position-specific best practices. The friendly and supportive people at Bashpole Software provide excellent mentorship. In this internship, there will be special training in conducting interviews.

Apply Now