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This summer, I am thrilled to be interning with Avodah. Avodah is a nonprofit that aims to develop Jewish social justice leaders through programs like the Jewish Service Corps, the Avodah Fellowship, and a wide variety of community engagement. Avodah’s Jewish Service Corps allows young people to contribute to leading anti-poverty nonprofits across America while living communally. Much like Brandeis, Avodah exists at the intersection of Judaism and social justice, emphasizing the importance of concepts like tikkun olam in today’s world. These elements combine to form a truly unique and valuable environment for young aspiring social and economic justice advocates.
At Avodah, I am the Development Intern, which means I work with the development team to nurture relationships with current and potential donors. My primary task is to research potential major donors in order to ascertain whether they would be interested in supporting Avodah’s mission. Additionally, I update Avodah’s synagogue database, compile comments from former corps members and fellows for future use, and I’m also helping create a newsletter that will be sent out to major donors in late July. While I only started the internship a few short weeks ago, I’ve already become much more comfortable with Salesforce, a software I use to research donors and update records. I’ve also learned about NOZA, a very useful database that helps with prospect research. I’m lucky that the bulk of my work is not dependent on in-person interaction; I am able to do so much remotely, and I’ve been continually impressed at how streamlined and organized Avodah has made my internship is despite the obvious difficulties caused by COVID.
Development is an absolutely essential component of any nonprofit. After all, without funding there’s no way for nonprofits to do all their incredible work! I was interested in this internship because I am deeply concerned about America’s ever-widening economic inequality, and because I love doing research. Development for an organization like Avodah seemed like the perfect way to combine those interests. What I couldn’t have predicted was how warm and friendly absolutely everyone at Avodah would be, and how fascinating it would be to observe how a major nonprofit functions.
While it’s early days yet, something I’ve already learned at Avodah is how incredibly complex a nonprofit is. Seeing all the teams of people that have to coordinate (now though Zoom calls, no less!) and use their particular talents to contribute to a greater whole is pretty amazing. This dynamic, I think, reflects a greater truth about social justice work in general: it’s the result of the collaboration of many individuals doing their part, not a burden to be shouldered by any one individual. Sometimes the problems in the world can seem overwhelming, but this more realistic, down-to-earth view of what progress looks like is heartening to me. To do real good in the world, you don’t have to be some superhero from a Hollywood movie; there are countless hardworking people around the world using their particular skills to contribute to a brighter future.