Internship in Government Relations

Internship Period/Type: This internship will run for 10 weeks. Interns are required to work 20 hours each week and will be paid $150 per week.

Supervision: The intern will report to The Heartland Institute’s government relations director.

Responsibilities: The internship will involve a wide variety of Government Relations responsibilities, including research on policy issues; outreach to elected officials; database development; and event marketing and promotion. Among the specific tasks that will be assigned to the intern during this period:

■ research on policy issues. This will require conducting research on issues within Heartland’s policy focus (budget and tax, telecom, school reform, health care, energy and environment, and finance); assisting legislative specialists in drafting Research & Commentaries, letters to the editor, and opinion-editorials.

■  outreach to elected officials. This requires alerting – through phone calls and emails – elected officials of Heartland’s policy work. To assist the Government Relations team in recruiting legislator to join The Legislative Forum at The Heartland Institute through a direct mail campaign.

■ assist with the promotion of at least one Heartland event. Assist the Government Relations Team in determining appropriate venues and topics for policy events to be held throughout the country; draft announcements and invitations for allies; work with Government Relations Director and Art Department to develop event invitation; and promote events to state and/or local elected officials and their staff.

■  administrative: Heartland tracks the performance of its Government Relations efforts closely. The intern will be expected to perform some data entry tasks (database updates on addresses/phone numbers for elected officials and assembling educational and promotional materials to be sent by the Government Relations department each week.

■ out-of-office work: the intern will be expected to attend Chicago-area events hosted by Heartland to assist with registration, site setup, and other activities. Depending on interest and availability, the intern may also be asked to travel with other staff to represent Heartland at events sponsored by others.

Generally, it is expected that the intern will spend one-half of his/her time in research and writing activities; one-quarter in telephone work; and one-quarter in administrative. That mix may change, however, based on the intern’s abilities and Heartland’s needs during the internship period.

Expected Skills: The intern is expected to have:

■ Knowledge of public policy issues and free market thought.
■ Significant experience and fluency with Word Perfect or Word for Windows and the ability to manage mail-merge processes.
■ Excellent written and oral communication skills, combined with a professional demeanor;
■ Attention to detail, organized, and ability to make reasoned judgements;
■ Experience with Web research, search engines, and email. Heartland uses both Internet Explorer and FireFox browsers, and Outlook Express as its preferred email program.

Email resume, cover letter and writing samples to Latreece Reed at lreed@heartland.org [1]