Internship Grant Proposal
A Founding Investment in the Future of Support for a Green Economy
Hazel Henderson Center
10 Carrera Street, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Executive Summary
The Hazel Henderson Center requests support to fund and expand its Internship Program — placing students from any academic discipline into hands-on, meaningful work at the intersection of ethical finance, systems thinking, and social innovation. The program runs in two tracks: a Summer track for national and international students, and a Semester track for local students, primarily from Flagler College.
A gift of $10,000 funds the Center's two Summer internship placements — stipend, mentor support, housing, and travel for students joining the Center from around the country or abroad. A gift of $6,000 funds a semester's two internship placements for local students. Partial gifts of any size are welcome and warmly encouraged toward either track — full funding is not required to make a meaningful contribution.
Housed at Hazel Henderson's former home in St. Augustine, interns get direct access to her archive, her network, and her unfinished work — in residence at the Center, or remotely. This request would convert the internship from an unpaid, self-funded experience into a paid opportunity, removing the financial barrier that currently limits who can participate
Statement of Need
Hazel Henderson's life's work was fundamentally intergenerational — she believed that solving the interconnected crises of climate change, inequality, and institutional decline required cultivating new leaders equipped with systems thinking and interdisciplinary fluency. The Internship Program is the most direct expression of that belief — yet it currently operates without dedicated funding.
Internships are offered free of charge to students, consistent with the terms of Hazel Henderson's trust — a commitment central to the Center's mission of equity and inclusion. But it also means the Center has no current mechanism to offer paid stipends, which limits participation to students who can afford to work unpaid, travel to St. Augustine, and cover their own living costs during a placement. Grant funding would open the program to a broader, more economically diverse pool of applicants — students who bring exactly the kind of interdisciplinary thinking Hazel Henderson valued, but who can't currently afford to walk through the door.
About the Hazel Henderson Center
The Hazel Henderson Center carries forward the legacy of Hazel Henderson (1933–2022) — ecological economist, futurist, syndicated columnist, author, and a founding voice of the global sustainability movement. For more than five decades, Henderson challenged conventional economic thinking and championed renewable energy, socially responsible investing, ethical markets, corporate accountability, and quality-of-life indicators that move beyond Gross Domestic Product.
The Center operates from Henderson's former home in St. Augustine — a property that served for four decades as a gathering place for scholars, entrepreneurs, investors, educators, journalists, and systems thinkers exploring new approaches to economics, sustainability, governance, and social innovation. Following Henderson's passing, trustees, advisors, collaborators, and community partners established the Center as a nonprofit institution committed to preserving and activating her intellectual legacy. Through leadership residencies, educational programming, research initiatives, strategic convenings, and community partnerships, the Center cultivates the ideas, relationships, and practical tools needed to address the defining challenges of this century.
The Center's key assets include:
A living library of more than 5,600 books and 1,000+ journal issues
Archives preserved through academic partnerships, including the University of Missouri
Residency accommodations, a research library, collaborative gathering spaces, a workshop room, kitchen, outdoor areas, a pool, and parking
An experienced leadership team and Strategic Foresight Advisory Committee with deep expertise in sustainability, ethical finance, education, and community development
Close relationships with Ethical Markets Media and its globally recognized Research Advisory Board, connecting the Center to a broad international network of practitioners, investors, academics, and public-sector leaders
The Hazel Henderson Center is a Florida not-for-profit corporation and a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. EIN: 41-2894661.
The Place
St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the United States, and the Center sits inside that living history. Its historic district is compact and fully walkable — cobblestone streets, Spanish colonial architecture, Flagler College's gilded halls, and the Castillo de San Marcos, standing guard over the bay since 1672. Within a short walk of the Center: waterfront seafood restaurants, neighborhood wine bars, art galleries, and dining that draws on four hundred and fifty years of layered culinary history. The Atlantic beaches are fifteen minutes away.
This isn't incidental to the program — it's central to it. Hazel chose this home deliberately, and every intern who comes here experiences a version of what she built her life's work around: a place where big thinking and genuine hospitality coexist.
The Program
Interns work directly alongside the Center's small, senior team on active initiatives — not observational or clerical tasks. Placements are tailored to a student's interests and academic background, often connecting to some of the Center's core focus areas — among them: technology and production; employment, work, and migration; trade, finance, debt, and information; peacebuilding and the impacts of militarization; pollution and resource depletion; consumption patterns and global culture; and social and institutional restructuring.
Typical intern projects include:
Grant research and proposal writing in support of the Center's own fundraising and partnership development
Ethical markets and systems-change research
Social enterprise projects and community programming
Website content, communications, and digital media
Archival and library projects, working directly with Hazel Henderson's annotated collection
Event support for convenings, workshops, and leadership residencies
Sustainability and permaculture garden initiatives on the Center's campus
Internships can be completed remotely or in residence at the Center in St. Augustine — students who stay on-site have access to the Living Library and the Center's campus in person, while remote interns work closely with staff on the same research, writing, and communications projects.
Who: Students from any discipline
Location: Remote, or in-residence at 10 Carrera Street, St. Augustine, Florida
Duration: Flexible; typically 8 to 12 weeks
Academic Credit: Available, coordinated with the student's home institution
Cost to Student: Free, per the terms of Hazel Henderson's trust
Program Structure: Two Tracks
The Internship Program runs in two tracks, each shaped around who it serves and the costs that come with it:
Summer Internships
Two interns per summer, drawn from a national and international applicant pool. Because summer interns travel from outside the St. Augustine area, this track covers relocation-related costs — housing, travel, and full-time mentor support — on top of the student's own stipend.
Semester Internships
Four interns per year — two each fall and spring semester — drawn primarily from Flagler College and other local colleges. Because semester interns are local, this track doesn't carry the housing and travel costs of the Summer track, though it still covers the student's stipend and mentor support.
Across both tracks, the Center supports six interns per year.
Where Your Money Goes
Summer Internships: $10,000
A $10,000 gift funds both Summer internships in full — covering stipends, dedicated mentor support, housing, and travel for two students joining the Center from around the country or abroad. Gifts of any size are welcome toward this track; a $5,000 gift funds a single Summer placement, and the Center accepts partial funding and combines gifts to reach a full placement.
Semester Internships: $6,000
A $6,000 gift funds both internship placements for a semester in full — covering stipends and dedicated mentor support for two local students. Gifts of any size are welcome toward this track as well; a $3,000 gift funds a single Semester placement.
The Center accepts full or partial funding toward either track, and gifts beyond a single placement help the Center support additional interns across both Summer and Semester cohorts
Scholarship Fund for Summer Interns
Beyond the standard Summer internship package, the Center maintains an additional scholarship fund to help cover costs specific to an individual intern's situation that the standard package doesn't anticipate. Accepted interns are informed that this additional support is available to them if needed. Selection to the program is made entirely on the strength of a candidate's application — the Center's selection committee has no visibility into whether an applicant may need or request scholarship support, and financial need plays no role in who is chosen. Interns are only informed that this additional support exists after they have been accepted.
Funder Impact
Support for the Internship Program does more than fund a summer placement — it invests in who carries this work forward. By removing the cost barrier to participation, your support:
Opens the program to a broader and more economically diverse pool of applicants across every discipline, not just those who can afford to work unpaid
Produces tangible, usable work for the Center — research briefs, grant materials, archival finding aids, and communications assets — while giving students a genuine understanding of what it takes to build a more ethical economy
Strengthens the pipeline of young leaders carrying Hazel Henderson's systems-thinking approach into their subsequent careers in policy, finance, education, and the nonprofit sector
In short, this isn't a gift to a single summer — it's an investment in who shapes the field's next generation.
Measures of Success
The Center intends to track the reach and impact of funded internships over time, including the number of students supported, the diversity of academic disciplines and institutions represented, and outcomes reported by former interns as their careers progress.
Organization
The Hazel Henderson Center is guided by an experienced leadership team with expertise in sustainability, education, nonprofit management, ethical finance, and community development:
Dr. Carol Spalding, Co-Trustee
Beth Binns, Managing Director and Co-Trustee
Dr. Paula Seymour, Director of Innovative Studies Programs
Mara Zepeda, Director of HH Legacy Initiatives
Jan McAlpine, Director of Development
Tommy Maletta, Editor, Ethical Markets
The Center also benefits from the guidance of its Strategic Foresight Advisory Committee, whose members include Leslie Danziger, Elsie Maio, Vicki Robin, former U.S. Representative Claudine Schneider, and Jean Gaddy Wilson. A broader network of advisors and collaborators contributes expertise across environmental stewardship, architecture, education, finance, governance, entrepreneurship, and systems change.
The Center’s close relationship with Ethical Markets Media and its internationally recognized Research Advisory Board gives participants access to a global network of practitioners, investors, academics, and public-sector leaders—significantly extending the professional development and collaborative opportunities available beyond what any single institution can offer.
Conclusion
Grant support from you will enable the Center to welcome its founding cohort of interns and build the operational foundation for a mentorship program of lasting educational and public impact. We are grateful for your consideration and invite you to reach out with any questions, to request additional detail on the Internship Program, or to schedule a conversation with Center leadership about how your support can make this work possible.
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