Internships
Catalyst serves the social business sector, offering research, investment and consultancy services to a variety of social, ethical, and environmental businesses. Our work draws on our team’s experience in the worlds of investment banking, social entrepreneurship, international development, venture capital and the voluntary sector. Our role is to provide the information, advice, networks and, in the case of our fund management activities, capital to drive the growth of these businesses and the sector as a whole. We are often looking for enthusiastic and business-literate interns to help us with our various projects.
Available Internships
At the moment we have vacancies in Research and Fund Management. We are also looking for an intern to work with Catalyst's CEO, researching thought leadership pieces.
Research Intern
We are currently looking for interns to work on our new online research product, aimed at potential and current investors in social business.
The website, socialinvestments.com, launched in March 2008. We are seeking candidates to help with the with maintaining and developing the website post-launch and with growing Catalyst’s online presence.
Some of the tasks will be suitable for those who want to work from home while others can only be carried out in Catalyst’s offices in Archway.
These tasks include:
- Researching and writing page-long reports on social businesses
- Contacting companies directly in relation to the website
- Uploading content to website
- Exploring online marketing for the website
- Identifying relevant reports written by other organizations to be linked to on the site
- Writing news synopses on relevant stories
- Managing Catalyst blogs
Fund Management Intern
The Fund Management team is looking for an intern to work alongside our Fund Marketing Associate during the marketing of our new fund and in addition produce a research report as outlined below. Catalyst envisions that this report or the research undertaken could potentially be linked to the successful intern’s academic requirements.
The intern's primary task will be to research, write and present a detailed report on an agreed sector (possibile subjects include, but are not restricted to, e-learning, cleantech and retail). The aim of this report would be to brief the Catalyst team in the relevant sector, including prevailing trends, possible growth areas, companies to watch, difficulties and pitfalls etc. If the written report is judged to be acceptable it may also be posted on the www.socialinvestments.com website to be included as part of Catalyst’s continuing research in the social investment sphere.
Additional tasks may include:
- Assisting in Investment Process tracking
- Assisting in researching of potential Investors
Hours and pay
Internships are mutually beneficial and are intended to be a fair deal: all interns should have the capacity to produce quality work that adds to Catalyst’s offering. In return we provide exposure to the social business sector, our way of working, and to our clients.
This role would be ideal for someone studying for a related undergraduate or postgraduate degree and we are willing to discuss making this role a more formal ‘placement’ as part of your studies.
The internship is unpaid and we will reimburse interns for travel and lunch expenses.
We would like each intern to work for a minimum of 5 hours work a week, although more would be preferable. It is absolutely essential to the smooth-running of this project that interns can stay on the job until mid-June 2008.
Background and experience
We are looking for candidates with the following qualities:
- Interest in the issues involved in the social business sector
- Business literate
- Fluent English – clear written English is particularly important
- Good university degree
- Proven competence with office software
- Motivated – can-do attitude
- Ability to work under pressure
- Good teamwork and communication skills
- Sense of humour
How to apply
Interested applicants are asked to submit the following to Julia Meek (Research Internship and Research Assistant for CEO) at julia@catfund.com or Anna Kidd (Fund Management Internship) at anna@catfund.com:
- Covering letter (stating your availability, goals for the internship, and where you heard about Catalyst)
- CV
- Short writing sample
Catalyst is developing an online portal for clear and objective information on the UK social business sector, to be launched in Q1 2008.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Catalyst Fund Management & Research Ltd is regulated by The FSA.