The upside of all this is that it gets our organization much-needed support from two very talented, very capable women who will keep our line of work in mind as they go on to have incredible careers. The downside is that 248+ others – many of whom had uber-impressive applications – are now out of luck (for us, for this semester, at least).

In a sense, this is a lose-lose situation, made worse by these new internship rules. Frank, my colleague who co-manages interns with me, and I often commiserate that there is No Way we would have been selected for our internship nowadays, based on the resumes we had when we applied back in Summer 2007 and 2008. (Both of us, like Mark, got our entrees into the professional world of international work through internships with NCIV. Sherry, like many other bosses, is highly inclined to hire somebody 1) who knows how to do what her organization does and 2) whose work is a known quantity…an enormous benefit when you’re deciding who you should trust when you’re investing a salary, benefits, organizational reputation, project success, and more.) Today, we – and a lot of other, more-qualified-than-we-were people – would be totally out of luck…if not for unpaid internships (which, despite the lack of cash, have got to be better than nothing in career terms).

On the other side, meanwhile, many of our member organizations, especially the all-volunteer and/or cash-strapped ones, absolutely rely on interns (usually unpaid, since the organization is all-volunteer and/or cash-strapped) to help with key aspects of their operations. This has the double benefit of 1) providing those interns with really wicked career experience that they couldn’t get pretty much any other way and 2) allowing those organizations to accomplish their core mission and maybe even expand their capacity to do other much-needed things.

For all of those reasons, while I was the lucky beneficiary of getting a fairly paid internship without those connections or resources – and while I’m sure some unpaid internships really are tantamount to voluntary slave labor, so you’d better choose your organization wisely and ask good questions in your interview – I am strongly in favor of keeping unpaid internships around for the foreseeable future. Especially now, when paid internships and employment are so hard to come by, those opportunities could mean the difference between a decade of flipping burgers and a legitimate gateway into the career that they want (or an irreplaceable opportunity to learn that they don’t want the career they thought they did).

Recommendation numero uno for those cash-strapped applicants: find a friend or relative whose basement you can bum in for a semester, either for cheap or for free. (Worked for me! Summer in a college friend’s family’s basement in Alexandria = $250, thanks to their generosity. What I gained from being poorly paid intern at an awesome organization = Priceless.)

Recommendation numero dos: if you don’t have those connections in Washington, look for international opportunities where you do know people/can afford the cost of living. Along with World Affairs Councils, Sister Cities programs, and others, our members are all over the United States, doing international work and looking for a few good interns. I’m hoping this new policy doesn’t cramp their ability – and yours – to get some benefits that money can’t buy.

P.S. – Looks like I’ve broken the cardinal blog rule of not writing a comment that’s longer than its post…a capital crime, given how much work I have to do, but a crime of passion, given how strongly I feel about this. Forgive me, Mark and Sherry, for I have sinned. (Grin!)