As part of an initiative to bolster fund raising and grant-writing while teaching students about nonprofit management, Dwight Hall recently launched its new Management Fellows program with the selection of five students as fellows.
Modeled closely after Dwight Hall’s successful Public School Interns and Urban Fellows programs, the management fellows will work one-on-one with professors from the Yale School of Management and the Dwight Hall Board of Directors as they become involved with Dwight Hall’s financial planning and administration. Fellows will also be active in a major upcoming project for Dwight Hall called Capital Campaign, in which the nonprofit organization hopes to raise $15 million dollars toward building renovations and its endowment.
“We’re really excited about it because it expands the scope of our abilities at Dwight Hall,” said Kathrine Burdick, Dwight Hall’s general secretary.
Recently selected fellow Brian Goldman ’05 said that because Dwight Hall has only four paid staff members, the program will allow it to accomplish more without having to hire more employees.
“The main goal would be to provide the management and strategic support that Dwight Hall needs,” Goldman said. “It can’t always do what it wants to do.”
Goldman is a Yale Daily News staff photographer.
The program developed out of work begun this school year by a group of students, led by David Pozen ’02, that applied for grants on behalf of Dwight Hall groups and put together a PowerPoint presentation, which Burdick said Dwight Hall hopes to use at various Yale clubs now as it tries to raise money.
“They’ll be really road-testing this idea,” Burdick said. “We have an idea of what it’ll look like, but like everything else, we’ll be constantly tinkering with it.”
Fellows will be working six to eight hours a week with an annual stipend of no less than $500, or the federal work-study equivalent for eligible students. Each fellow has been assigned a specific project.
In addition to Goldman, the other four fellows will be Marissa Kellogg ’03, Katherine Capelluto ’04, Randolph Cardona ’04 and Kira Ryskina ’03.
For students interested in the intricacies of running a nonprofit, being a management fellow presents a unique hands-on opportunity, Dwight Hall Co-Coordinator Louise Davis ’03 said.
“They’ll be able to give all of themselves to Dwight Hall if they choose to and get a lot out of it,” Davis said.
She added that the program reflects the spirit of Dwight Hall as a student-run organization that teaches leadership skills.
“Certainly it’s going to be a great personal experience for me to see how a nonprofit works,” Goldman said.