Managing Third Party Fundraising:
Working for a not for profit has allowed me to see the immense effort that goes into third party fundraising. Many people think that when member of the public is fundraising for a charity, that all the charity does is receive that money and write a thank you note. This is far from true.
At this point I would like to introduce you to two people who Arthritis WA has been working with extensively. They are currently undertaking third party fundraising for the foundation.
Mike Pauly:
Mike is a 73 year old man who suffers from osteoarthritis. Symptoms of this disease is include joint pain and swelling.
Mike took up walking once he was diagnosed to lose weight, which will help lessen the severity of his condition. This hobby soon tuned into a passion and now Mike is walking around Australia to raise money for Arthritis WA.
Mike took up walking once he was diagnosed to lose weight, which will help lessen the severity of his condition. This hobby soon tuned into a passion and now Mike is walking around Australia to raise money for Arthritis WA.
When I first heard about this journey I had the same reaction which you are all probably having right now. All I could ask myself was ‘Is he mad?’ He is 73 years old and is heading into the harsh northern climate. I raised these concerns with Lily, the PR coordinator, and she said she had the same reaction. It raise many questions as to whether it is ethical to support Mike to undertake such a arduous journey. While Lily did raise her concerns to Mike, he was so determined to go that nobody could stop him. A precaution that the PR department has taken, is writing a PR crisis management plan incase something were to happen to Mike on his journey.
This has been a very interesting aspect of my internship, as fundraising, especially third party fundraising wasn’t covered in any of my PR classes. However it still incorporates many for the skills I have learnt in my classes.
Mike’s Blog:
Mike Pauly has many followers and in order to keep in touch with them throughout his journey, Arthritis WA set him up a blog. Unfortunately neither Mike or his wife completely understand how to use the blog so this has become Arthritis Wa's job. Every couple of days Mike will email through a new blog entry and I will upload it to his blog.
We are consistently told by our PR tutors that in order to succeed in Public Relation we need to have impeccable spelling and grammar. This exercise with Mike has taught me how important the skill of proofreading and editing is. Since it is 40 degrees up north and Mike has usually been walking in that heat all day his sentence structures and spelling are less than desirable. Part of my job has now included proofreading and editing Mike’s blog entries to ensure that they are grammatically correctly before releasing them to the public.
Another aspect of my uni degree that has come in handy is how to effectively communicate this information to the right audience. I communicate this new information in the most targeted platform I have access to, through social media. I have been using the Arthritis WA Facebook page and Twitter extensively to communicate with as many West Australians interested in Arthritis research as I can about Mike and his plight. Unfortunately I would have left Arthritis WA before Mike reaches the Eastern States and we have an opportunity to get him on morning television.
Arthritis Today Magazine and e-newsletter:
Another great communication platform which Arthritis WA has is their Arthritis Today magazine and e-newsletter, both of which are sent out to Arthritis WA’s massive database. I have been given the chance to use my writing skills in these two publications. As well as writing various other stories, I have written quite a few pieces on Mike. We have extensively covered his departure ceremony and journey up north.
If anybody is interested in Mike, you can follow his blog here:
Nancy:
The next person I would like to introduce you to is Nancy, who I had the privilege of interviewing for the upcoming issue of the Arthritis Today magazine.
Nancy is an amazing women who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and is undertaking to HBF Run for a Reason to raise funds for arthritis research.
Arthritis Today Magazine and e-newsletter:
Interviewing and writing the article on Nancy was such a great experience for me. It was such a great PR still to utilise. Since interviewing is more of a journalism technique I hadn't actually covered it my PR classes, however Catherine Archer has extensively covered how to prep a spokesperson for an interview in PR Media. I found this this skill helped me immensely. By writing down all of the possible questions that Nancy could potentially be asked in an interview I was able to narrow down my questions and choose an interesting theme for my article.
If any of you ever need to interview anybody for your organisation, thinking back to the interview preparation skills might help you a lot.
Sorry this has been such a long post, but it is amazing how invested you get in third party fundraisers and the excitement you get from telling other people their stories.
Thanks for reading :)
Jacqueline
