Taking It Slow

Communicare is one big non-for-profit organisation broken into different sectors to help different parts of society. There is disability services, children services, physcology services etc. The marketing and media team, then has the task to ensure that, these services events or different promotional ideas are made ready for prior.

This week, my tasks included me to prep and get everything ready for the Children's Services part of Communicare. I had to get all the promotional items ready for the day. Being an event for children in a non- for- profit sector, no one exactly knew how many individuals were going to turn up, which is a dilemma when getting things ready. We decided that fifty was a good number, and I am guessing Cass (My manager) , has come up with this number from previous years.

The promotional packs I had to put together consisted of

• 50  A5 colouring booklets, which I had to print out and put together 
• Set up a selection of brochures that Communicare has in the Children services 
• Print of a variety of different colouring pages of the mascots of Children Services 
• Get the tattoos and balloons ready as well 

I was not putting the event together, just getting some bits and pieces ready for when the day came but I seemed to be enjoying it for some reason. 

The most exciting part of my day, was putting together a postcard type flyer for the staff that worked at Communicare. When it was time for me to do this task, I dived straight in, I looked at previous examples, but my managers were happy for me make it my own. It took me about two hours, through indesign to put the flyer together for it to look all perfect and it was something I was really proud of and trust me I am the most uncreative person on the planet. Indesign is an amazing program, I had never used it prior to working at Communicare, but it seems to be better than photoshop. The different elements you are able to change and put together. 

This was the first day at Communicare which was a little more "crusisy" for me, I was not pulling my hair out and the end of the day or running out like a headless chicken to meet deadlines. 

Till next time  :) 

The 1st day

In my last semester at university this semester, as a final year student, a couple weeks ago I began my journey of taking part in work experience at Communicare. Communicare is a non for profit organisation, helping the community, in different ways the organisation can.

 Walking into Communicare, for the first day of my internship, was a little daunting. Having only ever done work experiences at small organisations, i began thinking to myself, what happens if my PR skills are not up to scratch and not that great.

Walking in to the Marketing and Media office, I was met by Aimee and Cassandra my two supervisors, and they were lovely, I immediately felt as ease and comfortable i. I was shown to my desk and here is when the work began, setting up email, meeting other individuals who work at Communicare , that I would be interacting with.

The first day at Communicare, it was almost like learning PR from the basics. I was explained to about media releases, the news letter as well as the different events Communicare were involved in. I was made familiar to "Indesign" a program that the organisations uses to get their posters, newsletter etc done. I did online courses and at the end of it I was still confused on how to use it,having never used it before.

During the day, I also had to go and update the address book that Communicare had, correcting phone numbers, addresses and email addresses, since it has not been done since the 2011, making it very outdated. I did this through checking the different companies websites as well as ringing them up and making sure their details were right. This was my first Pr task and I was slightly excited to be doing something Public Relations related

Reaching the end of the day, my supervisor Aimee, informed me that she was leaving Communicare in two weeks, this was quite sad, seeing as she has been wonderful to me on my first day and supportive and along with that, during my interview she was just as lovely to have me on board.

My frist week at Communicare had been interesting and I was enjoying it and I was glad that the choice I had made to study Public Relations was  the right one.

At the end of the day, I was already looking forward to my shift at Communicare :)

Fouth and final blog

Hi everybody, This will be my fourth and final post. With my placement technically finished I have just two days next week to finish out my internship as the golf day I have been working on is next Tuesday I have decided to stay an extra couple of days.

I have found this to be a very worthwhile experience and have enjoyed my placement. I realize now that there is much more to working in Public Relations than what we can learn in the classroom and although the theory and practice is necessary there's nothing like getting pout there and doing it for yourself.

I would have to say coming to the end of my placement that I'm not entirely sure that a local not-for-profit is my desired job even though I have enjoyed working at Communicare. It has been useful though as I have had an opportunity to gain valuable work experience across a broad range of activities which has led me to work out which aspects I do and don't like about public relations.

I would like to finish by saying a big thank you to Communicare for taking me on board this student to gain some valuable work experience and I hope that my contribution has helped the organisation in some way as I believe they do a lot of great work for an important cause.

I don't have any imparting words of wisdom but I would like to wish everybody the best in their future pursuits in Public Relations!

Cheerio!

The event: Communicare's Charity Golf Day

The main focus of my internship has been working on Communicare's Charity Golf Day. Unfortunately the event takes place just a few days after the final reports and blogs are due and though I am glad to see the semester is ending it is a bit of a shame that I will not be able to blog about the event itself. Instead this blog will be more about the work I have done in the lead up to the event and my expectations of it. Just one week away from the event things are in full swing with everything ready to go we are now just waiting for the day. There is a full day of activities including pre-golf food and drinks as well as a putting competition, followed by the gold day and then a dinner. This years attendance for the event is double on last years attendance so that is a great success and in its second year the golf day is hoping to raise a great deal more money than in its first year. The purpose of this day is to raise money for the building and development of the Communicare Academy - a fully integrated educational facility for at risk or disengaged youth (now there is a sentence I have written a few times over the last couple of months!). Much of my time was spent sourcing sponsorship items for prizes and auction items for the dinner. This was to reduce the costs of running the event maximizing the amount of revenue from the event. I would have to say I was disappointed in the return we got for sponsorship items with a lot of businesses unwilling to give or saying that they have already used allocated their sponsorships for the year. We were however lucky enough to receive some sponsorship items for prizes and were able to get silent auctions on consignment which is not ideal but will mean there can still be an auction at the event. I was lucky to be brought on to work on this event as I enjoy golf and have participated in golf days before so it was good to know I was working on something that I could have a proper contribution to. My extra fundraising idea I brought to the day was the addition of a novelty hole where participants are made to tee off with their opposite hand, and if the want to hit normally they have to pay a fee to hit with their own club. Even if people choose not to pay it will at least be funny to watch right handed players hitting left handed and vice versa. I expect that the event will be a success and it will be good to see it all come together on the day. As this was the main focus of my placement it will be nice to have completed the main task of my internship. Till Next Time

Not-for-profit PR: Classroom v the office

Hi everyone, this is my second blog in which I will be reflecting on my experiences of not-for-profit PR in the classroom compared to a real work environment. There have been a number of units in which we have had to create PR plans for not-for-profit organisations while studying PR at Curtin, I have selected two organisations that I have written PR plans for during my studies and these are United Way WA and Friends of the Environment (FOTE). These two organisations were in two very different areas of not-for-profit - with FOTE being an environmental group and United Way WA being community oriented. They did however have similar issues in their operations with a lack of resources being highlighted as a key area holding back progress. This was the first similarity I found with these not-for-profit groups and Communicare, the limited staff numbers and marketing budgets which has a large impact on the types of marketing activities which the organisations can utilize. In class it was made very clear that the use of free media was an excellent way of raising awareness and bringing attention to an organisation. So when I started my placement at Communicare I was expecting there to be a large number of media releases written and communication with the local media, and while this tactic is utilized by the organisation it isn't used to the extent I was expecting. This is because it is difficult to on a day-to-day basis find something newsworthy to write about and it is also not guaranteed that a news outlet will run your story. Having said this Communicare do make use of free media in other ways such as the promotion of events such as community service announcements on local radio stations and community newspaper diary entries - which I had not used in any PR plan while studying and not for FOTE or United Way WA. The next similarity between the class and working in the office is events. Communicare run many events from their PR department with the aim of fundraising for the organisation. Though the main difference I have found between the way we plan events in class for assignments and the way in which events are planned in the office is there is a very small amount of time and focus put on the event plan itself - of course the plan must be thorough and include all of the important details - but once the plan is established much time and effort is put into the organisation of sponsorship and donations to help fund the event. In my assignments for FOTE and United Way WA it was sufficient to write a plan for an event with out looking too deeply into finding sponsorship items such as food and drinks for the event and other items for raffles and silent auctions, which seem to be the most common way in which extra funds are raised at an event. A fair portion of my time at Communicare has been spent sourcing items and requesting donations from companies for the event and outlining the benefits which that company will receive for their sponsorship. In my opinion this is an important part of events PR that I had not utilized before in class. Taking this unit and doing my work placement has broadened my view of working in PR and it has been good to apply some of the knowledge learnt in the classroom in a real working environment. It is good to see the similarities and differences between what has been learnt and what is done in an organisation to further enhance my studies.