The Auction

The SOM mantra is “Educating leaders for business and society”; here students are encouraged to work across boundaries and sectors. Often students feel like they must choose between taking a well-paid corporate internship or making an impact by working with a non-profit, governmental, or social enterprise that can’t afford a similar stipend. Given many students take out loans to go to graduate school, making a monetary sacrifice to follow their passions in the non-profit or social sector becomes even more challenging. The Internship Fund hopes to remedy that by using the funds we raise to compensate those peers at or close to the same wage they would expect in for-profit industries. By making not-for-profit jobs more financially accessible, we can increase the number of students—as well as the diversity of backgrounds—working in those spaces. Furthermore, we hope to expand the impact of these organizations by enabling them to hire highly qualified MBA students they may have otherwise not been able to attract.

All Internship Fund donations go directly to qualifying candidates to support their living expenses during their summer internships.

Since 1979, first-year MBA students at the Yale School of Management (SOM) have run the Internship Fund, which raises money to help support fellow students seeking work in the public sector. On Monday, April 20th, 2020, we will be holding our 33rd annual Internship Fund Auction. Commonly referred to as “The Auction,” the event takes place over the course of a week, starting with the silent auction (which lasts over a week), and culminating in a live auction event (virtual this year) where we feature big ticket items and experiences donated from SOM students, staff, and community.