Grant Recipient: Robert Troyer, Class of 2012
Major: Psychology
Organization: ServeNext
Location: Washington, D.C.
This summer I worked at ServeNext, which is a small nonprofit in Washington, D.C. that works to advance national service, Americorps, and social innovations as strategies to tackle our most pressing social challenges and strengthen our democracy. ServeNext works to accomplish this by organizing people that believe service is important in our society into a grassroots network that can pressure politicians in all levels of the government to make service an important issue. Initially I was tasked with outreach to generate applications for our new grassroots-field organizing network, Field Corps, which is the backbone of ServeNext’s strategy. This consisted of contacting and reaching out to other organizations with similar missions to ours, and engaging them in conversations about service and what we could do to coordinate with each other in order to enhance the movement. In addition, I’ve been involved in fundraising research and writing grant applications, as well as reviewing and scoring applications and resumes for the field program. It’s been a fantastic experience so far because the small size of ServeNext has allowed me to be involved in every aspect of operations, helping me see the true inner workings of the organization and has also meant that my opinion really matters. In addition, my experience has benefited greatly from a boss who goes out of his way to ensure that I am included in many decisions, and that I am involved in the whole process of running a small nonprofit.
