By Sarah Mohamed
Sarah Mohamed is a senior Business Administration major with minors in Social Entrepreneurship and International Affairs. She was on co-op as a Development Assistant for Strong Women, Strong Girls in Boston.
From the beginning, I wanted to study business so I could go into nonprofit management or work in social enterprise. Social impact has always been a requirement in any work that I do. There are however limited paid business co-ops in the social sector. The Strong Women, Strong Girls Development Assistant co-op position allowed me to put my business skills to use in an organization dedicated to empowering women. The social justice aspect was really important to me.
Strong Women, Strong Girls (SWSG) is a nonprofit mentoring organization whose vision is that every girl will realize her inner strengths to dream and do. Mentors from six college chapters across Boston (including Northeastern!) mentor a group of 3rd through 5th grade girls each week using a curriculum grounded on female role models. Those college women are also mentored by a group of professional women.
As Development Assistant, I worked directly under the Executive Director. The team is small with only seven full-time staff members. The entire development team was just the Executive Director and me, with support from the Communications Assistant and Development Committee, which is a subset of the board of directors. This meant that I took on the bulk of development-related administrative work such processing donations and keeping record of donors. But once I got the hang of that, it opened up my time to working on more strategic projects like managing the creation of the annual Social Impact Report and ideating and executing the End of Year Appeal. I also assisted in the cultivation and on-going communication with high-level donors and corporate sponsors and acted as a thought-partner to the ED in all things development and fundraising. Because the team is small, I assisted on some projects that the program team needed help on, as well.
I gained so much insight into the world of fundraising from this role. My communication and organizational skills improved significantly. I was treated like a professional and was trusted with representing the organization in various circumstances. I definitely feel very qualified to work as a professional in the nonprofit space.
The important work that organizations like SWSG are doing would not be possible without funding and that understanding really motivated me throughout my co-op. The most meaningful project I worked on was crafting our End of Year Appeal. I interviewed a college mentor who used to be a participant in the program as a young girl and captured her story. I then used that story to design a fundraising page, appeal letter, and series of communications. In the end, we raised more than $20,000, making for the most successful end-of-year giving the organization has ever had.
After having this co-op experience, I plan to continue to work in the social justice space. My experience with fundraising and development will be relevant to any role and has helped me understand the nonprofit sector on a broader scale. Though I don’t think that I’ll be working in development for the rest of my life, this experience and the connections I made will be especially helpful when I eventually start my own organization.
