Every year, liberty organizations recruit some of the brightest young people in the country.

Then we hand them a laptop, point them toward the coffee machine, and hope for the best.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to transform a good internship into an experience that develops future liberty movement leaders and delivers long-term value for your organization and your donors.

1. Give Interns Meaningful Opportunities to Learn About the Ideas

Internships should expose young people not only to the work of advancing liberty, but also to the ideas that underpin it. (Because it’s unlikely your intern’s ideological awakening will begin with reconciling receipts.)

Consider organizing roundtable discussions around foundational texts, hosting informal lunch conversations with staff, or encouraging interns to attend lectures and speaker events. Even a weekly discussion group can help interns deepen their understanding of the principles that brought them to the movement in the first place. Introduce them to the ideas and writings of thinkers such as Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Frédéric Bastiat, and Adam Smith.

The goal is not merely to teach interns how the work gets done, but to help them understand why it is worth doing.

2. Help Interns Understand the Landscape of the Liberty Movement

Internships naturally give young people an inside look at your organization and its mission. But they should also help interns understand that your organization is part of a much larger ecosystem working to advance liberty.

Many interns know about a handful of free-market organizations but have little understanding of the broader movement. Seeing the connections among think tanks, litigation centers, educational organizations, media outlets, and philanthropic institutions helps interns appreciate the movement’s broader strategy and impact.

This is an area where Talent Market can help. Because we work with hundreds of liberty-advancing organizations, we can give your interns a brief overview of the movement and help them appreciate the wide range of organizations within it. Think of it as a guided tour of the liberty movement, minus the matching T-shirts and uncomfortable bus ride. To learn more, drop Katy Gambella a note.

3. Help Interns Understand the Career Opportunities Available

Helping your interns understand the liberty ecosystem is a great first step. And the next is to help them understand the career opportunities available within the liberty movement.

Many interns assume the liberty movement consists mostly of policy analysts. That’s understandable. From the outside, it can seem like everyone spends their days writing op-eds, quoting Hayek, and spending an alarming amount of time discussing marginal tax rates.

In reality, organizations need development professionals, communications specialists, attorneys, operations leaders, project managers, event planners, marketers, HR experts, accountants, and many other types of talent.

Helping interns understand the variety of career paths available can open doors they never knew existed.

And doing so will increase the chances that your interns continue on a career path advancing liberty. This will leverage your organization’s time investment and your donors’ financial investments in your organization and the internship program.

Again, Talent Market is here to help! Talent Market regularly presents to interns about the variety of opportunities available and offers career guidance about how to take the next step. Email Katy Gambella to learn more.

4. Take Your Interns to at Least One Important Event

By the time many of us have been in the movement for a while, we’ve attended enough conferences, black tie affairs, and rubber-chicken dinners to last a lifetime. But for an intern, these events can be genuinely exciting and even transformational.

Conferences, speaker series, donor events, and networking gatherings can be eye-opening experiences for young people.

Seeing the broader movement in action helps interns appreciate that they are part of something much larger than a single organization. It also gives them opportunities to meet peers and begin building relationships that may last for decades.

Have interns attend your organization’s events and those hosted by allied organizations, including conferences, lunches, roundtables, and other gatherings. And once the internship ends, continue inviting them to organizational events when appropriate. It is a simple way to maintain the relationship, keep former interns connected to your work, and help them continue building a place for themselves in the movement.

Years from now, they may not remember every assignment they completed, but they will remember the experience of feeling connected to a larger cause.

5. Connect Your Interns with Talent Market

One of the easiest ways to enhance your interns’ experience during the summer is to introduce them to Talent Market and let them know we can be a resource for them from now until they retire.

Talent Market offers career guidance to interns, fellows, associates, and clerks throughout the liberty movement. We answer questions about resumes and interviews, help young professionals think through career decisions, and connect them with opportunities when the timing is right.

We’ve placed more than 1,600 individuals in the liberty movement (including countless former interns!) with more than 300 free-market nonprofits.

A simple introduction today can help ensure they remain connected to the liberty movement for decades to come. Please encourage your interns to submit their information to Talent Market so we can stay connected and serve as a resource long after the summer ends.

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Internships may last only a few months, but talent development lasts a career.

And that’s good for your interns, good for your organization, and good stewardship of the resources your donors have invested in developing the next generation of liberty leaders.

After all, today‘s intern could become tomorrow‘s CEO.

Or, if things go especially well, tomorrow‘s donor.

Or, if things go especially badly, tomorrow‘s member of Congress. (I kid!)