In my final year of studies, I realised my interest in not-for-profit sector compared to corporate or consultancy because I prefer being committed to a cause rather than a business or a company. I chose Baptistcare because being a Christian I like the idea of working for a Christian organisation. Baptistcare is also student-friendly, so I thought it would be good for me to be interning with an organisation that actually puts effort and care in mentoring the students.
I used to think of not-for-profit organisations as being small and having "minimal organisation", but it's certainly not the case with Baptistcare. It is an extensive organisation with more than 1400 staff, 13 residential aged care facilities and 8 retirement villages, as well as disability services and community aged care spread across metropolitan and regional WA - and the organisation is still growing.
Baptistcare main office in Welshpool
I began my first week on 4 February. I attended the weekly team meeting where they went through everyone's to-do list for the week. So my tasks were:
1. Update the media contact list
So far Laura has been relying on email addresses she found on different media websites, but she wasn't sure if the press releases she sent ever reached the right people. Laura also asked me to look at options for media monitoring services because Baptistcare doesn't monitor its media presence. I suggested to do media monitoring internally because it was too expensive to outsource it to another company.
2. Interview two clients for stories to go on Reaching Out, the quarterly magazine.
One of them is a father with two young boys with autism who recently moved into a new home. The other one is a resident at one of the aged care facilities who was reunited to an old friend she hadn't seen for 30 years through the Baptistcare's 40th Anniversary advertising campaign. Having done a second major in Journalism, I really enjoyed writing interview questions and thinking of the story angles we could do. More story ideas came in and I was asked to interview people for three more stories. One of the stories has been published on the Baptistcare website and issued as a press release. You can see it on news or media releases.
3. Think about how to utilise some free paintballing tickets that were given to Baptistcare by a sponsor
4. Think about re-working Baptistcare website
We had another meeting to discuss the Baptistcare Annual Recognition Award Night to be held in September. We looked at different venue and theme options, and discuss various concerns that need to be addressed based on last year's feedback. After that Laura asked me to proofread the sponsorship document for the event. I gained an insight into event planning in the real world and what is involved with obtaining sponsorship.
My first week has given me a taste of doing PR in a real organisation. I learnt how to communicate with people both internal and external to the organisation.
Alfinda Agyputri
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Curtin Bentley
2 comments:
Hi Alfinda,
Wow it certainly sounds like you are getting a great dose of PR experience at your internship!
Like you, I too feel the same in regards to working for an organization and a cause that I feel passionate about and I'm glad that you seem to have found that passion at Baptistcare. As someone who is currently doing their internship at a consultancy - that sense of passion needs to be spread across a number of different organizations which can sometimes be difficult, particularly if you don't support the actions of certain clients.
Also in regards to your media monitoring suggestion - I think that in house monitoring is a good idea and definitely less expensive however depending on the size of the organization - it can also be a hassle and a time consuming task too. I've done a bit of media monitoring at my internship however since the consultancy outsources its monitoring - any monitoring done within the organization is just to make sure nothing is missed in the smaller, community papers.
From what you have told us, Baptistcare does sound like a big not-for-profit organization and therefore if they do get consistent coverage across a range of newspapers and/or have limited people to complete the task on a daily basis, it may be still worthwhile to outsource the expense.
Another benefit of outsourcing is that it's also a lot of more thorough than doing it yourself. It's actually quite amazing how often the name of your company might pop up in a completely unrelated news article that you would otherwise not have known about if not for media monitor's word-detecting software. Even the smallest mention of the organization in the wrong sort of article could impact the organization's perception in the community which is why its quite important to make sure media monitoring is done often and done right.
Anyway, just thought I would offer my own little insight and I can't wait to hear more about your internship in the next 10 weeks!
Hi Bianca,
Thanks for your suggestion! Yes I agree that internal media monitoring can be a painful and time-consuming task. At the moment Baptistcare just doesn't have the resources to do it internally. However, I don't think they have the budget to outsource their media monitoring either.
The reason I did not recommend using media monitoring service was because when I look at Baptistcare's media activities, the ratio between the time they issue media releases and the frequency of media monitoring is highly not proportionate. So it seems like a waste of money to pay for daily media monitoring when they only issue a media release once or twice a month. But I take your point about the chance of Baptistcare being mentioned in articles that are written not as a result of their media releases.
I do think media monitoring services are great tools for organisations. I think Baptistcare will eventually need to set aside some budget to outsource it as they increase their media activities.
Thanks again for your insights!
Alfinda
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