I read numerous listings for unpaid internships on this list and I know that
museums are not exactly rolling in the dough to be able to pay all the staff
they need. And sure, I know that internships are great learning
opportunities, etc. etc. HOWEVER, I also know from my own professional
experience and also now as the parent of a college student who cannot afford
to do an unpaid internship, that if we are serious about diversifying our
staffs (and interns are certainly our future staffs) that we need to figure
out some way to pay interns. Just as you and I cannot afford to work for
free, most college students cannot afford that either. Most of them need to
work at paying jobs in the summer to help pay for their college expenses.
They are suffering many of the same cutbacks in financial aid that our own
institutions suffer from. So by offering non-compensated internships we are
opening our museums only to students who have families wealthy enough to
support their kids doing this and to foot all the bills for college without
any expectations from the student themselves. Hey! I wish everyone were that
fortunate but that is definitely not the reality out there. And it is also
giving us a very narrow, elite pool of interns which is just the opposite of
what we say we are trying to do in our museums.
But how to get funding for PAID internships?
I'd like to here from some museums (or students who have done paid or unpaid
internships) on how they creatively solved this problem.

Jeanne Finan