Erica Smith

Agency: Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging

Term: Fall - 2003

My internship is at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging. Although they offer a wide variety of services for the aging, including assisted living, Adult Day Care, Alzheimer's Care, and hospice services, I work in the Development Department. I do a wide variety of things, which include being responsible for helping out with grant research, special events, grant proposals, the Handmaker Life Newsletter, the Memorial Board, Tree of Life, Direct Mail Campaign, the silent auction donations/ acknowledgements, tracking, and many other day-to-day duties depending on the events that are taking place at a given time.

The agency is committed to providing a safe haven for the elderly and has many programs and services that are used for that purpose. One of the biggest roles of my department is to raise funds so that Handmaker is able to continue to provide charitable care to people that have outlived their resources. The staff in my department also puts together and oversees many projects. These include the Annual Sustaining Campaign, the State Tax Credit Program, The Annual Event, raising money for our in-house synagogue, procuring all donations for the employee of the month funds, organizing the Halloween event, and a multitude of other holiday celebrations.

There are many reasons pertaining to why I chose this internship. The first is that I wanted to find a way to combine my major (Family Studies) with my minor (Journalism). I am able to do this at Handmaker, as I am a part of the newsletter, have other assignments that require me to write, and am often displaying my creative talents. Another reason that I chose this internship is because I am really not sure what I want to do after graduation, so I thought that this internship might be able to expose me to a variety of different atmospheres, which it something that it definitely has helped me to do. I have learned that one never knows exactly how to be prepared for a job, because there are some aspects of this position that I never thought that I would come across. Also, there is something to be learned from every new experience.

I have always felt very important at Handmaker. A special time for me was after I had secured 12-13 donations for their Employee of the Month Award, the CEO wrote me a personal letter thanking me for all the work that I had done. The advice that I would give to anyone that is thinking of doing the internship is that they should be willing to “go out of their element” a little because they will need to solicit donors, a task that is not as easy as it sounds (especially for the shy and timid!) Also, they need to be willing to do whatever is necessary to get the task at hand done.

University of Arizona | College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
School of Family and Consumer Sciences | Family Studies and Human Development

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