SLS: Volunteer & Program Intern with Dress for Success (2025-26 school year)

Dress for Success Oregon (DFSO) is the leading workforce development organization in Oregon that exclusively supports women and gender expansive folks, helping them find and retain work, support their families, and achieve personal & economic independence & stability.

This position is one of the options for Portland State's Student Leaders for Service program. Please apply to the Student Leaders for Service program to express interest in this opportunity. To access the application to apply for SLS for the the 2025-26 school year, please visit https://pdx.givepulse.com/event/590919

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The mission of Dress for Success Oregon is to empower women to achieve economic independence by providing a network of support, professional attire and the development tools to help women thrive in work and in life. Our purpose is to offer wrap-around support to women in need seeking personal and professional development, creating long-lasting change for women, their families, and our community. We are a part of a global movement for change, empowering women to obtain safer and better futures.

We are a small staff of four supporting over 1,000 women annually and are excited by the opportunity to bring on a Student Leader to Service to provide support to our programs and volunteer team while providing a safe and welcoming learning environment for those interested in the non profit field.

In the role of of Volunteer & Program Intern, you would support our full time staff that runs client-facing programs and our volunteer program which includes both behind the scenes project development and direct client work. This would include supporting with volunteer engagement including leading volunteer orientations, training volunteers in different roles, helping them with onboarding, scheduling volunteers in our database, logging their hours, sending follow up thank yous etc. We rely on a base of over 700 volunteers to support our mission annually, through "core volunteers" that help support us in ongoing roles, and "episodic volunteers" who come for one-time shifts to support big projects on a specific day. As the Volunteer & Program Intern, you would help support other volunteers in helping make our programs happen!

Our volunteers are our lifeblood and having support from an intern to help with the onboarding volunteers would help our volunteer retention and overall mission to support more women and gender expansive folks in our community getting jobs and supporting their communities.

Skills and Knowledge Required: 

• Friendly, flexible and can-do attitude is required
• Strong, demonstrated organizational skill and attention to detail
• Ability to work effectively in an ever-changing work environment with many distractions
• Ability to work both independently and as a team, and take direction when given
• Ability to follow effective and efficient systems to streamline procedures
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills
• Database and CRM experience a plus
• Proficient in Google Suite with an emphasis in Outlook, Word, and Excel
• Interest and knowledge, or willingness to learn about women-centered spaces focused on intersectionality and trauma informed care.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Background in human services field or education
• Interest in non profit management
• Experience in a fast-paced, customer service environment is helpful

Application, Onboarding, and Training process:  We have all of our volunteers and staff observe their roles, receive comprehensive handbooks for training and offer a very hands-on approach to onboarding. We have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all of the responsibilities that will be asked of the SLS intern. We will begin training by offering a holistic approach to our programs: the SLS member will go through our volunteer orientation, Personal Shopping and Career Series, followed by peer-to-peer learning about our behind-the-scenes task. Our agency is very interactive and you will get to shadow multiple staff members and volunteers and we can offer a very transparent and open-door training for them.

Prior to working directly with clients volunteers, staff and the SLS are asked to learn about trauma-informed care in our volunteer orientation and receive hands-on learnings about our work and mission to support all identities of women and gender expansive folks.

Benefits of this Position: 

In this role, you will learn so much about women-centered work, economic and social justice and the inner workings of a small non-profit. There is a lot to learn from managing and working with volunteers, gleaning from their experiences but also the process of volunteer management from onboarding to training to regular communication and scheduling. You will also learn the power of teamwork and community as well as gain experience in CRMs (Salesforce), public speaking, leading training opportunities, supporting project management and client services.

Supervision: The SLS intern will report to the Executive Director of Dress for Success, Lindsey Norlander. Lindsay has worked with volunteers for 15+ years and has both a holistic but also systematic approach to training. She values true partnership, collaboration and transparency and honor different learning styles.

Location & Transportation: Dress for Success, 1532 NE 37th Ave., Portland, OR 97232. 

Transit accessibility from the PSU campus within 30 minutes. We are accessible from the 75 busline, the 77 busline, the max blue line.

Schedule Available: Intern should expect to serve 4-6 hours/week. We see clients Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-3pm and Wednesdays 10am-12pm; it would be nice if the SLS intern could support 2 out of 3 of those times for 2-3 hours.