Internships are an increasingly popular trend in today’s work culture, especially in the nonprofit sector. They provide on-job training, hands-on experience, and a foot in the door for individuals who aspire to be leaders and change-makers within the nonprofit world. Yet, we must ask ourselves, “What message is being conveyed by nonprofit organizations that insist they only take on interns who can work for free?” Despite major strides made in recent years such as the White House now offering interns a USD 750 weekly stipend, research shows that 43 percent of internships are still unpaid. The Center For Research on College-Workforce Transition further estimates that the US has about 3.2 million interns, and approximately 1 million interns are unpaid annually. As college costs rise, students have more need than ever for money-earning jobs to help finance their education. Yet, nonprofits in the US allow these debt-ridden students to work for free. Is there a solution for nonprofits who are perpetuating this unsustainable practice? COVID-19 and its aftermath have had a bruising effect on the nonprofit job market for recent graduates. In 2020, 26 percent of final-year students lost internships, and only 28.6 percent were able to find jobs straight after graduation. There have been dramatic declines in the quality of internships, and interns’ experiences in remote environments have been mediocre, at best. For example, many college students counting on internships for networking have lost the opportunity to engage with colleagues in the hallway or at the water cooler as the professional office setting is replaced by the home office. Remote internships also impeded “learning by seeing” and morphed into task-based, menial jobs, further reducing the opportunity for enriching learning. However, it is not only interns who are missing out on opportunities. Sofia Garcia Garcia, global development specialist and head of strategic partnerships and external engagement at SOS Children's Villages International, explains: “The organizations also lose social capital as interns bring different points of view, lived experiences, and knowledge that would truly enrich the entire operation and staff.” With this challenging financial landscape, many nonprofits lean on unpaid internships to provide extra organizational capacity, a practice appropriated from the for-profit sector. Although nonprofit organizations have lofty goals, they also create the most absurd policies that discourage marginalized youth from pursuing careers in international development, perpetuating the very same problems they claim to be fighting. For example, Maria Hinojosa, the first Latina reporter in the US and Pulitzer Prize winner, also confessed in her memoir Once I was You that during school, she had to wait tables to pay for her living expenses, which made it hard to take internships because she needed shifts to pay rent. “Here I was at the end of college and I hadn't done one single internship. […] The truth was that I couldn't afford to do an unpaid internship and I was too ashamed to reveal that.” As a result of systemic oppression and limited resources, many people from traditionally marginalized backgrounds struggle to advance their education and careers. Inherently, unpaid training positions disadvantage lower-income students, no matter how well designed they may be. Women bear almost two-thirds of the national student loan debt and Black graduates owe, on average, USD $7,400 more than white graduates. According to the US Department of Labor, the American nonprofit industrial complex is not legally held accountable to provide paid internships. But rebranding “volunteer work” as “internships” is more a means for nonprofits to attract more students for unpaid work in exchange for the prestige on their resumes. The gender pay gap is further exacerbated by racial discrimination. Access to internships is limited for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). According to a Zippia study, over 58 percent of interns were white, 17.7 percent were Hispanic, or Latino, and 10.4 percent were Black or African American in 2019. Since white populations have lower poverty rates than minorities, they can often afford to partake in unpaid internships solely for professional benefits, a privilege rarely given to BIPOC populations. Accordingly, when internships are unpaid, achieving social capital becomes especially difficult for students not included in the dominant culture — low-income students. Financial stability is the necessary foundation for building social capital. Therefore, populations that have historically been economically underprivileged are also limited in opportunities to gain social capital; this hampers social and financial mobility.