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PILC Database–Internal

PILC Database

FOR INTERNAL PILC USE ONLY

This page lays out instructions on how to use the PILC Airtable Database. The database includes information about NYU alumni in public interest careers, public interest employers, and postgraduate fellowships and student fellowships.

Information Accessible to Students & Alumni

Database information is accessible to students and alumni through interfaces. Interfaces that are marked ** include alumni information and additionally require that users log in to Airtable using NYU global login. Instructions for logging into the interfaces are available on each of the pages.

These tables are embedded into specific PILC websites, but they can also be accessed as a separate page by clicking the "View larger version" link at the bottom right corner of the interface. (The URL for these links are then accessible publicly, which is why the interfaces with alumni info needs to be double-protected.)

Accessible Directories

PILC Alumni Directory** and Public Interest Employers Directory, embedded at the bottom of the Public Interest Networking page.
Postgraduate Fellowships Directory
NYU Postgraduate Fellows Directory** (I might combine these two onto one page)
Prior Host Organizations Directory, embedded at the bottom of the Finding Your Host Org section of the Postgraduate Fellowships Handbook.
Student Fellowships Directory, embedded at the bottom on the Summer & Term-Time Internships section of the JD Public Interest Job Search Handbook.

Interfaces for Internal PILC Use Only

There are also a number of interfaces that can be used to add and edit alumni, employer and fellowship information. These tables are not publicly accessible, even to NYU users. To access them, you need to log into PILC's Airtable account with following credentials:

Email: kathryn.neilson@nyu.edu; Password: nyuPILC2025

Once you log in, you will see a purple navigation bar on the left hand side of the text with a number of interfaces. Most of the interfaces have drop-down menus at the top of the page that you can use to filter the listings. You can also use the Filter, Sort and Search buttons on the top right of the screen.

PILC Alumni Jobs

The PILC Alumni Jobs includes all of the information that we have regarding NYU alumni in public interest positions.

You can copy/paste information directly from this interface (although it's a bit fuzty). You can also click into the individual records, where there is info set up to copy/paste at the top of the screen.

From this screen, you can also add/edit information about this particular position, including title changes, end date if the person has left the position, etc.

PILC Alumni Directory

The PILC Alumni Directory includes information about over 1,500 NYU alumni who have worked in at least one postgraduate public interest role. The semi-exception is PILC students who start out in a clerkship. The database does not include details of clerkships, but does note if an alumnus has clerked, so those students are added at graduation without job information, so they can be followed up on after their clerkships end.

The Alumni Directory is most useful for looking up specific alum and adding/editing their contact and job information. In addition to general information (name, class year, emails), you can also add special "tags" that can be used to identify groups of alumni. There are a number of options, including identity-related (eg BIPOC, LGBTQ+), school related (eg RTK, Latinx Scholar), and career related (eg Academic, Came from private sector, Left to private sector). These options can be added to and adjusted as needed.

PILC Alumni Careers

The PLC Alumni Careers interface allows you to see the full scope of an alumni's career even within parameters of specific positions. For example, to see the career trajectories of students who were awarded a launch grant, choose "NYU Launch Grants" from the fellowship drop-down. The result will be the alumni who were awarded postgrad launch grants with all of their postgrad job information, not just the funded positions.

From this table, you can click into both the alumnus and the individual job records to see or edit information.

Public Interest Employers

The PI Employers interface is a listing of public interest employers. Most of the listed employers either have employed NYU alumni or offer postgraduate fellowships, but it isn't limited to that.

Based on a variety of factors, some organizations also have assigned "Parent Organizations." Sometimes the child organizations are actually separate entities (e.g., Brooklyn Legal Services in relation to Legal Services NYC or ACLU affiliates), and sometimes programs or sections of organizations are listed as their own entity (e.g., the various ACLU programs and Legal Aid Society's Criminal, Civil and Family Defense practices). There's no hard rule about these -- it's just what made sense to me at the time. You can use the Parent Org drop-down to identify all of the organizations/programs associated with a specific organization in this way.

Any NYU alumni who have worked with the organizations are listed; just click on the little arrow icon to the left of the organization name to expand. You can click into either the individual organization or individual job records to review/edit information.

Employer Outreach

The PI Employer Outreach is set up to be used when conducting organizational outreach, and incorporates many of the fields that we have used in the past. This interface may need more input and development to be sufficiently user friendly, but would be a great option for maintaining this information in one central location.

Postgrad Fellowships

The Postgrad Fellowships interface allows you to look up individual fellowships, copy/paste basic information for students, and add/edit any relevant information.