Become a SIIF Sponsor and Pay it Forward by Pledging 0.5%

Since its creation a decade ago, the Social Impact Internship Fund (SIIF) has awarded more than $300,000 to MBA students at the McDonough School of Business who pursue unpaid or low-paying summer internships with the goal of making a positive impact on society. By empowering students to use their business education for the good of mankind, SIIF has advanced one of the core Jesuit principles of Georgetown University: “Women and Men for Others.”

SIIF, which is run by the members of the Georgetown chapter of Net Impact, raises funds from MBA students by selling Kegs cups, renting graduation gowns and raffling prizes at events such as Spring Formal. These funds have historically been matched by the Dean's Office, but there is still not enough to fund summer internships at a level anywhere close to a typical MBA internship. To reduce the tradeoff between paying bills and doing good, and make McDonough more competitive against impact-minded MBA programs such as NYU Stern and Berkeley Haas, SIIF is humbly asking McDonough students to pay it forward as SIIF Sponsors.

To be a SIIF Sponsor, all you need to do now is pledge 0.5% of your summer pay toward the SIIF fund for the incoming class. For a typical 10-to-12-week internship, 0.5% is roughly two or three hours of your time. You’ll be done by lunchtime on your first day of orientation! Plus, you get to make a social impact no matter what type of internship you choose. Everybody wins.

Don’t have your internship lined up just yet? Short on cash? No problem. It’s the pledge that counts. We’ll collect the actual donations on OrgSync when you get back in the fall – hopefully with a checking account that is no longer crying out to the world in sadness.

When you make the pledge, you’ll get a custom decal that you can stick on your locker to show your commitment to creating a better world through business. When you follow through on your pledge in the fall, you’ll get an extra-special bonus gift as a token of our appreciation for your help in reducing the barrier to social impact internships for the M19s. (Added bonus: you can put SIIF Sponsor on your LinkedIn and show the world you care about social impact!)

FAQs:

If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty broke. Why are you asking me for money?
Yeah, we’re pretty broke too. But without SIIF, many students who choose to work at a nonprofit or a microfinance startup would be super broke. This is our chance to show that McDonough students look out for one another and care about using business for the greater good. The team at SIIF is also working to secure matching donations from alumni to create a sustainable fund for the long haul, so that students don’t bear the burden.

Is the donation on our before-tax or after-tax income?
Such an MBA question! You get to decide. The donation form on OrgSync won’t care.

What if I want to give less/more than 0.5%?
We decided to only accept donations of 0.5% to reflect our belief that we’re all in this together. All of us would spend a few hours helping a friend in need, regardless of exactly how much money we could make during those hours. This is no different. By contributing a few hours of our work to business for the good of society, we can live up to the closing words of Georgetown’s mission statement – and “live generously in service to others.”

Where will my money go? Will people know how much I made this summer?
Our administrators, Angela Thornburgh and Mehtab Bakshi, will handle transactions with total confidentiality. People will know that you donated but they won’t know how much. Every dollar you donate will go to the SIIF fund. Nothing will be used for operations.