Summer Intern (Graduate Student)

Robin Hood Foundation • New York, NY

5h • Onsite

About The Position

Founded in 1988, Robin Hood finds, fuels, and creates the most impactful and scalable solutions lifting families out of poverty in New York City. The largest poverty fighting organization in New York City, Robin Hood partners with top nonprofits in New York City and invests in legal services, housing, meals, workforce development training, education programs, and other vital services that give New Yorkers in need the tools they need to build better lives. The programs it funds are often the first of their kind and serve as demonstration models to identify what works before being replicated in other cities. Because its Board of Directors covers 100% of all administrative, fundraising, and evaluation costs, every dollar donated goes directly to organizations helping New Yorkers in need.

While Robin Hood’s primary focus is on New York, its impact extends far beyond the borders of the city. Its pioneering, metrics-based approach has become the gold standard for charities around the nation as Robin Hood works to understand and evaluate the impact of its partners to ensure that its philanthropic dollars are utilized to maximum impact. Robin Hood also supports its community partners and their leaders with financial and strategic support and management assistance that allows those organizations to maximize their impact.

Building on our 35 years of experience, Robin Hood is expanding our impact with an explicit focus on lifting families sustainably and measurably out of poverty through supporting the most effective community partners; influencing public policy; raising our thought leadership profile; importing and exporting effective ideas and strategies nationally; and building new collaborations with strategic partners. As New York City emerges from the worst of the global pandemic, we are focused on getting families back on their feet; getting kids back on track; and getting New Yorkers back to work.

Robin Hood also understands that if we are to support families living in poverty and find permanent pathways out of poverty and towards financial independence, we must become an effective partner with government, especially at the City and State levels. We do this by leveraging the expertise of those who are closest to the challenges of poverty, including community members, community-based organizations, and others with specialized skills and knowledge. We also aim to collaborate with New York City government to fund program and policy innovations that hold the promise of expanding economic opportunity in New York City – providing nimble “risk capital” for high-potential strategies. In this way, we seek to leverage our philanthropic investments by finding ways to advance the highest-impact strategies at scale.

Given its long-standing reputation among influencers and support of more than roughly 200 New York City non-profit organizations on an annual basis, Robin Hood has the unique ability to be a catalyzing force for households experiencing poverty, bringing distinct constituencies together to develop and spread the most effective strategies to advance economic mobility in New York City and beyond.

Robin Hood is constantly searching for innovative approaches to poverty fighting. This position is a critical part of our research, development and grantmaking endeavors. The summer interns, as typically graduate students, act as team members of the department to which they are assigned; they will assist with the work of that unit, conducting research, analyses, and communications efforts across several issues.  They may also work with organizations we support, as well as assess opportunities and make recommendations on a variety of directions, investments or field-building and management assistance efforts we are considering. The intern will have robust exposure to strategies for poverty alleviation, proposal assessments and grant-making determinations, as well as a variety of operational and nonprofit management issues.

Potential initiatives include assessing organizations or interventions we could support or launch, solving operational challenges for community partners, tackling, and presenting evaluation matters and results through examining and analyzing data, or creating a new methodology to measure or forecast impact or helping to project manage efforts already in place. There may also be strategy projects or assessment projects for Robin Hood and its community partners, including exploring the success of a post effort, or investigating new approaches to revenue generation, asset management or cost analysis. Past projects have included assessing new funding opportunities in the community college system, the public housing system, and the ed/tech field, examining the successes and challenges of earned income efforts, developing a pilot program in the shared economy, building a tool for sharing our program metrics with stakeholders and facilitating a merger between community partners.

Summer intern program will take place for 10 weeks from June 8, 2026 – August 13, 2026. Interns will be required to work from the office three days per week with Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays as the mandatory “in-office” workdays.

Requirements

• Enrolled in a graduate program with commitment to social justice, human services and urban affairs and an interest in focusing on strategy development, research and analysis, policy matters and/or administration in social services, non-profit and government sectors.
• Demonstrated success with senior stakeholder management and project management.
• Ability to structure and analyze qualitative and quantitative data and draw insightful conclusions. Ability to synthesize and present, in written and verbal form, persuasive and compelling arguments using information from multiple, diverse sources.
• Experience with generating and analyzing financial statements, with non-profit exposure a plus.
• Exceptional abilities in critical thinking, succinct writing and oral presentation.
• Probing curiosity. Interest and aptitude for projects involving social ventures.

Nice To Haves

• For MBA candidates: Two or more years of work experience in management consulting preferred.
• For MPP, MPA, MPH candidates: Two or more years of work experience in policy, non-profits, direct human services initiatives, government or other public service fields preferred.

Responsibilities

• Developing a detailed work plan, laying out the optimal activities and a timeline to facilitate Robin Hood’s decision-making over the course of the assignment.
• Envisioning, designing, and executing a data collection strategy including surveys, interviews, focus groups, financial analysis and secondary research.
• Synthesizing findings and developing recommendations with a clearly articulated rationale, including benefits/costs or rate of return information.
• Facilitating decision-making across diverse sets of stakeholders.
• Creating action plans with next steps and timelines and making a presentation on the work product.

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Intern