I’m curious as to how much work an unpaid intern should do and what they should receive as compensation.

I’m a full time student and I work part time and on top do that I do an unpaid internship teaching students abroad at an organization since early last year. I volunteered there for four weeks while abroad working with kids. I worked closely with them and asked for a letter of recommendation, to which they agreed only if I teach kids remotely from home as well. I agreed, and for the past six months have been teaching remotely for three hours once a week. They asked for me to do a presentation, write an essay on my experience abroad, and create lesson plans and share with them all of this. I agreed, and don’t mind it at all. But after all this, they still asked that I write my own letter of recommendation and they sign it. Okay so I did.

They don’t want to send the letter to the graduate schools I’m applying to until I donate money to them (which I did before but they say they need it more bc of the pandemic) and I raise at least $500 on my birthday and they want me to teach more days. Because of my work and schooling schedule I can’t teach more days. But I’m afraid I won’t be able to leave this internship in a few months when I go to graduate school bc he says this is a lifelong commitment and if I want a LOR then I need to show that lifelong commitment. I thought that unpaid internships should only last a few months. I truly don’t mind supporting the organization in the future and donating when I can but I feel as if I’m not getting much out of this.

Also, I’m not a certified English teacher or anything and the supervisor wants specific teaching strategies and specific grammar lessons—things that I don’t know myself so I have to find it online, but he wants me to come up with my own strategies and lessons.

What kind of compensation should unpaid interns receive?