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

Introducing not for profit PR

Hi all, My name is Martin Kruit and I have ben doing my placement at Communicare Inc. for that last couple of weeks. I thought I would get a feel for it first before I started my blogs so I had something decent to write about when I got to it. Communicare Inc. was not my first choice for doing my placement but after unseccessful attempts to find work I was introduced to through a friend to a member of the marketing department of Communicare who set me up with an interview, highlighting just how important your personal networks are in this industry! At the time I had not heard of Communicare and I had no real idea about what they do, as I am sure there are a few of you who also don't know here is some information about the organisation and the roles I have been assigned. Communicare is a not for profit organisation located in Cannington. Their vision is to provide excellence in support services to the community and operate five different service areas. These are are; Childrens Services; Family Services; Training and Development Services; Employment Services; and Therapeutic, Accommodation and Domestic Violence Services. There are 280 employees at Communicare along with a large volunteer base, the organisation helps in excess of a quarter of a million Australians each year. As for my placement, I am located in the Marketing and PR department, made up of two full time workers and now myself - helping out two days a week. This small team is in charge of all marketing, PR and fundraising efforts for the organisation. At the moment the organisation is in the middle of the development of a new educational facility for at risk high school students and the marketing and PR department is in charge of a bulk of the fundraising neccessary to the building of this school. My roles are mainly based around working on some of the fundraising events that are taking place this year as a part of this fundraising effort. I was initially excited I had landed a placement and was very happy to be assigned the charity golf day as the main event I would be working on, I had previously written to some sporting clubs with the aim of gaining placement but was unseccessful so I has happy that my work would at least be somewhat sports related. Most of my duties on this regard have been sponsorship related, locating businesses and writing letters asking for donations or supplies for the event. After initially just working on the golf day my list of task grew. I have been attending event plan meeting for next year's youth expo which has been interesting to see how events are set up from the very start. I have also started working on the quiz night where I have been using some of the techniques learnt at uni such as media releases and community service announcements. I have also enjoyed learning to use the 'In Design' program and am starting to get some tasks involving making flyers, brochures etc... All in all it has been a good start to my placememnt. There are a lot of things to learn in the real world that you can talk about in class but are not the same until you get out there and do them for yourself. I look forward to the rest of my placement and will let you all know how things are going in my next blog post. Until then Goodbye!