Experience gained can be invaluable on your CV, says Jenny Knight

Opportunities to become an intern with a charity are increasing as the sector requires graduates to have work experience before landing their first job.

As befits a sector where costs have to be kept down so donations are not wasted, most internships are unpaid but they offer graduates the chance to amass skills and build contacts.

Such is the scramble to snap up an internship with a charity that Cancer Research UK is running a competition with ten prizes of three-week placements next summer, including travel expenses and £4 a day for lunch. The competition to find innovative ways to raise money for the charity (gogivegain.org) is being launched this month and the winners will be announced in April.

The placements will not necessarily go to those who raise the most money but to those who come up with the best fundraising ideas, while demonstrating business skills and enterprise as well as raising the profile of the charity and its research.

Critics of unpaid internships claim that they give an advantage to job hunters who can afford to work without a salary. But the same interns risk wasting their time doing low-level tasks without much hope of getting a job at the end of the experience.

Mati Chikaura, 21, is doing a year’s internship at the London branch of The Haven breast cancer support charity as part of her sandwich course degree in accountancy and finance at the University of Exeter and is earning a salary of £12,000 a year.

She says: “Doing this placement will increase my employability when I graduate. I am interested in charity work and want to make a difference in my job. This gives me invaluable experience of the field. I help with fundraising events and with marketing and PR. Accountancy is very relevant to working with a charity and this opportunity gives me a range of experience so I can figure out what I eventually want to do.”

At the small charity RAFT, which raises funds and researches the repair of wounds and skin, unpaid interns and work placement students are invaluable. But Leonor Stjepic, the chief executive, is adamant that interns at the group in Northwood, Middlesex, must also benefit.

“We have just given two of our interns full-time jobs as research assistants. We can only pay travel and lunch expenses but we are getting more and more applications,” she says. “We invite them for a proper interview, which will be useful experience even if we don’t take them on.

“As we are a very small charity people get wide experience. Our research staff join in the fundraising and meet donors and patients. We give our interns projects so they have something to put on their CV.

“We had one PR intern who built up a portfolio and generated some national publicity. He used the experience to land a job with one of the biggest PR companies in the country.We have graduates and undergraduates who join us for the summer and we also had someone doing a sandwich course in marketing who spent a year here. We get a huge amount from these people and their ideas.”

Cancer Research is taking part in a live internet question and answer session on the Milkround website (milkround.com) on November 22 from 2pm to 3pm, giving details of graduate opportunities and work in the charity industry.