{"id":298,"date":"2011-03-17T14:03:17","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T14:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaelsmithlaw.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/nonprofit-unpaid-interns-1.html"},"modified":"2025-03-09T22:13:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T02:13:38","slug":"nonprofit-unpaid-interns-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/nonprofit-unpaid-interns-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it legal for a nonprofit organization to use unpaid interns?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Note: The Department of Labor guidance, Fact Sheet #71, discussed in this article has been superseded as it applies to the use of unpaid interns by businesses.\u00a0 See the discussion of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/revised-policy-on-the-use-of-unpaid-interns\/\">the revised policy here<\/a>. The guidance as it applies to the use of unpaid interns by nonprofit organizations appears to be unchanged.]<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/business-unpaid-interns\/\">our last post<\/a> explained, for-profit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-law-and-commercial-transactions.html\">businesses <\/a>are very limited in their ability to use unpaid interns legally. Unless the internship program meets six different criteria to qualify the intern as a trainee, the intern is an employee subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA.<\/p>\n<p>For nonprofits, however, there is a third possibility. The intern may qualify as a volunteer, in which case the intern is not an employee under FLSA and not subject to the minimum wage and overtime compensation requirements. The footnote to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Fact-Sheet-71-2010.pdf\">Fact Sheet #71<\/a>\u00a0issued last year by the Department of Labor&#8217;s\u00a0Wage and Hour Division recognizes an exception to FSLA for individuals who volunteer their time to nonprofit organizations for religious, charitable, civic, or humanitarian purposes, provided they do so freely and without expecting any compensation. In those situations, unpaid internships are generally allowable.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/nonprofit-unpaid-interns-1\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading Is it legal for a nonprofit organization to use unpaid interns?\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Note: The Department of Labor guidance, Fact Sheet #71, discussed in this article has been superseded as it applies to the use of unpaid interns by businesses.\u00a0 See the discussion of the revised policy here. The guidance as it applies to the use of unpaid interns by nonprofit organizations appears to be unchanged.] As our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment-law","category-non-profit-organizations","category-supreme-court-decisions"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Is it legal for a nonprofit organization to use unpaid interns? &#8212; Indiana Business Law Blog &#8212; March 17, 2011<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&nbsp; As our last post explained, for-profit businesses are very limited in their ability to use unpaid interns legally. Unless the internship program &#8212; March 17, 2011\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/nonprofit-unpaid-interns-1\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael R. Smith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Is it legal for a nonprofit organization to use unpaid interns? &#8212; Indiana Business Law Blog &#8212; March 17, 2011","description":"&nbsp; As our last post explained, for-profit businesses are very limited in their ability to use unpaid interns legally. Unless the internship program &#8212; March 17, 2011","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/nonprofit-unpaid-interns-1\/","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Michael R. Smith","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/nonprofit-unpaid-interns-1\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.hpindiana.law\/business-blog\/nonprofit-unpaid-interns-1\/"},"author":{"name":"Michael R. 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