Interns

There are a few not-quite-volunteering things going on at the moment and the "intern" is one of them that's spread from the USA. Typically it involves young people working for free in the hope of impressing the employer so much that a paid role is created.

Most our sector people in our sector have seen something similar - the  and  volunteer who progresses into employment with us. Not only have I championed such volunteers, I've got two jobs that way myself. It's different to the modern intern though. Typically a volunteer to employee person isn't working anything like full-time hours with the charity and they probably started volunteering for other reasons.

A modern intern typically works full-time and hopes to get a well paid job at the end of it. A few interns even pay for the privilege. With such motivations, it's not surprising that some "unsuccessful" interns feel cheated and exploited and hence sites such as Intern Aware with its  "campaign for fair, paid internships".

Government have got involved - HMRC are currently investigating 100 firms using interns for possible breaches of the national minimum wage laws.

Here in the real voluntary sector, we need to be careful not to catch any of the mud that's being thrown and, of course, do our "volunteer agreements" properly. See Volunteering England for a guide