I spent three days intern­ing for the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion, ini­tially know­ing noth­ing more about the cor­po­ra­tion than its mis­sion to facil­i­tate pri­vate fund­ing to pub­lic schools in the Prince­ton area. I was first greeted by Adri­enne Rubin, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the foun­da­tion. We started the day by hav­ing a brief dis­cus­sion of the foundation’s role in the edu­ca­tion sec­tor, and I real­ized that the orga­ni­za­tion not only pro­vides fund­ing, but also serves as an impor­tant con­nec­tion between numer­ous dif­fer­ent parts of the com­mu­nity, which encom­passes con­cerned par­ents, the regional board of edu­ca­tion, and donors. Adri­enne also intro­duced me to the numer­ous ini­tia­tives that the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion have been actively involved in, includ­ing the Power-up cam­paign aimed at encour­ag­ing fund­ing for enhanced tech­no­log­i­cal resources, as well as the annual mini-grants that are granted to teach­ers inspired to con­duct classes in a more inno­v­a­tive and effec­tive man­ner. I was imme­di­ately struck by not only the multi-dimensional respon­si­bil­i­ties and tasks that Adri­enne has to deal with every day, but also how imper­a­tive and essen­tial the non­profit orga­ni­za­tion is to the local com­mu­nity; it acts both as a “bridge” and a bene­fac­tor to the Prince­ton community.

I spent the major­ity of my time in my Princetern­ship assist­ing Adri­enne with two projects involv­ing research on poten­tial donor prospects. As the foun­da­tion encour­ages phil­an­thropy, it is impor­tant that the com­pany approaches the appro­pri­ate prospects that have more inti­mate con­nec­tions with the Prince­ton pub­lic school com­mu­nity. Thus, I exam­ined numer­ous data­bases with var­i­ous arrays of infor­ma­tion and helped Adri­enne deter­mine a cou­ple dozen prospects that have a stronger asso­ci­a­tion with the pub­lic school sys­tem and will most likely be will­ing to con­tribute to pub­lic edu­ca­tion. I also con­ducted some back­ground research on poten­tial donors that could ben­e­fit the foundation’s prospects of gar­ner­ing phil­an­thropic con­tri­bu­tions from the local community.

The meet­ings I attended dur­ing my Princetern­ship were the high­lights of my expe­ri­ence. On the first day, I par­tic­i­pated in the annual Com­mu­nity Works Con­fer­ence held in the Frist Cam­pus Cen­ter, where over 200 dif­fer­ent­non­profit orga­ni­za­tions in the region were rep­re­sented. Here, I lis­tened to and acquired knowl­edge from speak­ers, includ­ing Adri­enne, on how to “orches­trate” the suc­cess of a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion. I learned about the ways non­profit lead­ers uti­lize their resources and net­work­ing skills to achieve their soci­etal mis­sions, and I real­ized that the ulti­mate skill that leads to suc­cess is pos­sess­ing strong com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. On the sec­ond day, I fol­lowed Adri­enne to a Par­ents Teach­ers Orga­ni­za­tion (PTO) meet­ing at John­son Park Ele­men­tary School. In the meet­ing, par­ents and teach­ers dis­cussed the prospects of uti­liz­ing its annual funds to improve tech­no­log­i­cal equip­ment in the school, and expressed their con­cerns of future fund­ing by the Board of Edu­ca­tion to Adri­enne. I was impressed by the enthu­si­asm and con­cern the par­ents exhib­ited towards the edu­ca­tion of their chil­dren; how­ever, the meet­ing also illus­trated the inher­ent dis­trust between the par­ents and the admin­is­tra­tive board of edu­ca­tion. As an inter­na­tional stu­dent, I found this expe­ri­ence invalu­able, as it shed light on the state of the Amer­i­can Edu­ca­tion sys­tem at the moment, and I was able to relate this to many of the dilem­mas that exist in my pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem back home.  Later that morn­ing, I also attended a brief meet­ing with Church & Dwight, Co, which pro­vides fund­ing for the “Music After School Pro­gram,” one of many projects that the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion runs. Again, I wit­nessed the impor­tance of net­work­ing effec­tively with pro­fes­sional part­ners in order for the foun­da­tion to receive the fund­ing that is nec­es­sary to keep the com­pany run­ning as well as to bet­ter Prince­ton education.

Adri­enne Rubin and Harold

I had a splen­did time work­ing with Adri­enne at the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion, and it was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence get­ting to know more about the state of edu­ca­tion around the Prince­ton area. I would rec­om­mend this Princetern­ship to any­one inter­ested in know­ing more about the non­profit indus­try, espe­cially in education.