Overview
Dyson Grand Challenges Impact Internship: Common Ground Collective
The Dyson Grand Challenges Program team will serve as a liaison between the intern and the internship host. The intern, a student employee of Cornell University, will focus on the outlined duties working with a mentor from Common Ground Collective. This opportunity is exclusively available to Dyson undergraduates.
Term:
The internship will take place during Cornell University's summer break, lasting approximately 12 weeks. The exact start and end dates are flexible. On average, the intern should expect to work approximately 20 hours per week, totaling around 150 hours for the summer.
Type:
Remote
Compensation:
Hourly: $19.00
Campaign Development for Fundraising and Engagement Intern
Internship Purpose:
This internship bridges strategy and execution, offering hands-on experience advancing a real-world social enterprise from concept to launch. Building on prior Grand Challenges work, the intern will work with Common Ground Collective to help advance the Makaʻāinana Market—a community-owned cooperative food hub and grocery store on Maui—by translating an existing pitch deck and feasibility insights into a culturally grounded marketing and fundraising campaign. The intern will develop a polished, ready-to-use engagement toolkit to support fundraising, partnerships, and cooperative member recruitment.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Refine and adapt the existing pitch deck created by a Grand Challenges project team into a polished, locally relevant fundraising and engagement campaign ready for immediate use
- Develop a clear fundraising narrative and messaging framework tailored to distinct stakeholder groups, including local investors, community members, partners, and prospective cooperative members
- Create a community-focused marketing and engagement strategy that increases readiness to engage local investors, partners, and cooperative members
- Draft practical, implementation-ready campaign materials such as one-pagers, social media posts, email templates, presentation outlines, and talking points for use in meetings, presentations, and outreach
- Identify and segment key stakeholder groups and define clear, effective engagement pathways for each audience
- Support the development of a phased outreach and fundraising timeline that can scale across future capital-raising phases
- Recommend metrics to track engagement, outreach effectiveness, and fundraising progress
- Prepare a final, repeatable fundraising and engagement toolkit that can be used immediately and adapted to support future phases of capital raising
Qualifications:
- Marketing & Communications: Strong written and visual communication skills, with experience or interest in marketing, fundraising, or impact investing. Ability to develop clear, compelling content for diverse audiences across digital and presentation formats.
- Research Synthesis & Storytelling: Ability to synthesize research, feasibility findings, and background materials into concise, persuasive narratives and messaging frameworks.
- Community & Stakeholder Engagement: Interest in food systems, cooperative models, and community-based enterprises, with openness to culturally focused, place-based, and community-led work.
- Independent & Remote Work: Comfort working independently in a remote environment, managing time effectively, and collaborating virtually with a small team.
- Mission Alignment & Curiosity: Strong interest in social enterprise, local economic development, and values-driven projects, with a willingness to learn and adapt in a real-world setting.
