Hi Everyone,
I am currently into 3rd week of my placement at St Vincent de Paul Society. As this is my first entry, just a little background on the charitable organization...The St Vincent de Paul Society has been assisting Australians since 1854 and currently has over 900 Conference Members, 2500 volunteers, 300 Vinnies Youth Members and 77 Conferences working hard to assist people in need and combat social injustice across WA.
Currently I am working with the PR & Fundraising department within the Society. The primary role of the PR & Fundraising department is to ensure the Society maintains a visible presence in the West Australian community through public relation opportunities and brand awareness, with the aim of generating donations to support the Society’s good work. The department is also responsible for the planning, preparation and implementation of fundraising strategies, appeals, events, media placement and advertising, sponsorship and internal and external communications.
During the past eight days with the Society, I’ve been given the tasks such as doing up brochure, media statement, updating media list, packing info&media kits, media letters and research on potential businesses that might be interested to support and donate items for upcoming fundraising event... I spend the last friday on the office floor packing posters and fact sheets, donations envelops to be sent out to all conferences around the region...I'll blog more about the appeal again in my next entry... :)
Since St Vincent operates internationally, there is a National style and Identity guide I need to apply and refer to when it comes communicating with internal or external audiences. A whole set of standardize definition of terms, logos, stationary formats etc which I am trying to get familiar with. It got a little confusing at first as I was not familiar to the Society’s work and structure to understand some terms use in their everyday language. I had to change a couple of terms used in the publication materials. :x Anyone encounter similar problems in their placements?
4 comments:
How fantastic that you are doing your professional placement at St Vincent de Paul. I (as I'm sure so many people agree) think it is such a great association, I'm sure you're really enjoying it. Every staff member must be so proud to be a part of such an organisation. When you hear stories of all the hard work and efforts from those of you in the office, paying off and helping those in need must be extremely rewarding.
I know exactly what you mean in regards to company stylistic guidelines for text, font, formatting and logos etc. I also encountered this when I was on my prac as I was at a school and they too had their own style guide. I was lucky they gave me my own guide and from then on I was so careful when writing the Headmaster's name, the School's name, the date and basically anything.
Goodluck with the remainder of your prac.
Reply three
Hey I just read your blog that referred to your struggles with the St. Vincent De Paul terminology logo usage and formatting styles. I have had exactly the same thing at the City of Swan.
When it came to writing media release (which is what I have been doing a lot of) it was quite straight forward as I have mostly been writing them on behalf of organisations that operate separately from the City of Swan; although I did struggle with my writing style. Quite understandably Sascha was quite strict about my wording, as it had to sound like something that she would send out to ensure that there was one unified voice. I remember the first media release I wrote on my first day and it took seven attempts (yes I counted) for me to have it written to her liking! I was so worried that my writing was so appalling that it was going to take that many changes to get it ready to be sent out every time. The next day I went and spoke to her about it and my concern’s and she was able to assure me my writing style was fine, it is just it had to sound more like hers (not a bad thing I must add).
Since then I have become more in-tune with her writing style and I am now able to send her a media release that I have written and she will send it back with perhaps one or two small changes, but that is it.
Regarding the rest of your blog I have also spent a fair bit of my time on the floor compiling welcome packs and compiling mail outs to various businesses in our area. While it is super monotonous and slightly boring I do really enjoy that in the afternoon when the last thing I feel like doing is writing, so I have come to love those jobs just as much as sending out a media release that I have written to real journalists.
I hope that I have put your mind at rest that you are not the only one that has spent a considerable amount of time doing ‘stuff’ and not practical writing.
Much love
Robyn
Hi Soapy,
It sounds as though you have completed an impressive array of public relations activities during your placement at the St Vincent de Paul Society. Isn’t amazing what we can learn and achieve in such a short period of time?
Through my placement at Freehands, a new boutique volunteering agency, I have also come across style guides. Freehands is currently in the midst of developing their own guide to assist the development of their website.
In my opinion, a style guide has the capacity to ensure consistency and therefore strengthen of communication efforts of an organisation. On the contrary though, it can also interfere with creative thinking and activities such as guerilla marketing which may limit the organisation from being adaptable and forward thinking.
I do, however, see the need for employing a style guide as a national or international organisation. It definitely reduces the risk of different branches publishing inconsistent and perhaps even contradicting communication materials. I believe it is unreasonable to appoint one head branch to overlook every single communication being pushed out to the public. It can be highly inefficient and complicated. Therefore employing a national style guide is an ideal practice to ensure messages are regulated. Failing to do so can really diffuse the branding of the organisation which will subsequently affect their credibility and appeal, detriment their financial prospects and ultimately limit their services.
This is particularly severe in not-for-profit organisations that already endure limited resources and saturated demand for their much needed services.
So as I do feel for you in being restricted by these guidelines, it is realistically unavoidable as it is the best practice to ensure no discrepancies which will in turn harm the organisation and their services.
To combat this restriction though I recommend procedures to be put in place for employers to submit requests for review should something fall outside the guidelines of the style guide.
Would be happy to hear what anyone else thinks of this.=)
Cheers,
Linda Truong
Curtin University | Perth | Western Australia
Hi.
I am also doing my placement with a not for profit, the Association for the Blind of WA, and I have come across the same difficulties.
In writing letters to clients and other interested parties I found it quite hard to write a simple thank-you letter. This is due to the fact, as you mentioned, that I just don't know enough about the work they do and the terminology they use there! This is especially relevant as we need to watch the font and size etc of text to cater for those who can read but have a vision impairment!
I think, as you may also have discovered, it is fantastic doing the work experience with a not for profit organisation as not only are we helping the community, we are learning so much and our work is actually very valued as they always need more volunteers!
Keep up the good work for the rest of the time!!
Emma
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