Not For Profit: Giving back to the community

Hi everyone,

My name is Jayde and I have recently started an internship at Curtin Volunteers! as the Communications Officer.

I always love working for Not For Profit organisations as I feel that it is an opportunity to give back to the community whilst utilizing and improving your skill set. This is one of the reasons why i chose to do my placement at Curtin Volunteers! I have worked in Not For Profit organisations before and even though the money is not as competitive as the corporate or private sector, I always find it more rewarding.
I'm hoping that this placement will be the same!

My role in the organisation is to streamline all communication and messages that leave the organisation. This includes monitoring social media, writing and editing content for the website and newsletters and writing media releases.

The role of communications officer was only introduced to Curtin Volunteers! at the beginning of this year which means that previously all of the communication leaving the organisation was anything but uniform and promoting a consistent message!

In my first week I went through and edited the website. This was a time consuming, but essential task! The content that was on the website was written by an array of different people, all with differing writing styles and idea's on what is appropriate grammar and spelling!

It was amazing to see how differently a website is portrayed to its audience when it is written be a single person, in a uniform style. You can check out the new website content at www.cv.curtin.edu.au

I'm finding it extremely fascinating to see how the organisation works as it is purely student/volunteer run (except for three paid positions). Due to a lack of funds they cannot employ as many people as they would like in order for things to run as effectively as possible but the amount that they do with such little resources is incredible!

I am really enjoying my placement so far and feel that i have a lot of ideas and suggestions to help improve the organisation!

Looking forward to any feedback or comments!

Jayde

What makes writing so important?

Hi all, 

Looking back at my 20 days spent at Woodside, I’m realising how important the writing skills of a PR consultant are.

The Oxford dictionary defines writing as the activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text.

Writing is therefore the vital means of communication within an organisation as it is the primary basis upon which our work is expressed.

Always paying attention to the grammatical errors, to the tense you use and make sure you use the active rather than the passive voice is essential.

I paid lots of attention and time proof reading my work when my mind was refreshed to make sure I didn’t left any basic errors behind.

Good style and quality writing is an essential PR job skill, as most of our tasks require writing convinced and effective documents. I’ve done a multitude of re-writing tasks, and found it quite hard sometimes to keep the meaning but change the structure of a sentence or paragraph. Use different words, find synonyms, keep the information and change the orientation of the sentence. That’s the magic skill of a good PR consultant.

I believe that experience and practice are the only way you can improve your writing skills, and I thank Woodside for the great experience opportunity I had.

Happy writing throughout your careers!

Cheers

Alice

Last few days... offered a job!

Super excited about this being my last post, I can now start writing this huge report! I honestly don’t know how in a few thousand words I can describe what I’ve learnt and explain what I’ve done it doesn’t seem to serve the experience justice. To say the least I have done way more than I thought I would or could do and I’m so stocked with the whole time at my prac place Gymnastics WA.

During my time over the semester I have designed and written a sponsorship package, written many media releases and liaised with many local media personal, organised photo shoots and liaised with some well-known journalists and set up a webpage and produced a heap a news bulletins, just to name a bit.

The coolest stuff i've done laterly has been organising media. I've been the Media Officer at GWA since the start of term and have built great contacts, the event I'm involved with is recieving coverage from The West Australian and Not Another Footy Show, and I'm in talks with Foxtel and Channel 7!

What I have learnt has been through doing and its pushed me out of my comfort zone which has challenged me. Working at GWA where they don’t have a public relations person meant I had to jump right into the deep end and apply my knowledge of the skills I had learnt at uni in theory into practice.

The hardest thing for me to overcome was learning through doing and the mistakes I made because I prefer to learn by watching first. This meant I learnt through my failures and by the things that weren’t great, which was a reality check for me, in that in the real world you won’t be told what you’re doing well necessarily only by the things that need improving.

The greatest improvement for me has been my writing, I honestly struggled to write a media release at the beginning of my Prac, now I can write one in 5 minutes no problem. I knew before my work experience that I was well spoken in person but I found this hard to translate into text, this has been something that I’ve defiantly improved with.

I have seen firsthand a well-run organisation that doesn’t utilise the benefits of public relations and have seen how quickly it has benefited from someone implementing public relations techniques. Through my experience I have learnt so much (cliché I know) and have surprised myself. I surprised the event partner too, he offered me a job!

So goodbye blog and good luck to everyone with their reports

Peace out trouts

And who said not-for-profits were easy?

Hi everyone

Thought I'd get cracking with my first blog post since we're almost coming up to week 4!

Since the beginning of July I've started my work placement with the not-for-profit organisation Relationships Australia (WA). Relationships Australia is mainly interested in building up those human relationships and adding value to the person. They deal in counselling, mediation, professional development, educational courses, employee assistance programs and Aboriginal services. What I do is help out in their marketing/PR department with writing up articles, writing brochures and in the future hopefully starting up some social media.

Honestly even though we were heavily encouraged to always be on the lookout for work experience opportunities and try as much as we could I never bothered to apply for anything until this unit. This was bad for me because it made me so nervous on my first week of placement; I was quiet and hopefully not too unfriendly to the rest of my department.

Well one month later I've definitely improved and gained that confidence to try my best and not let my team down. Relationships Australia is a medium sized organisation and because of that they have their own marketing/PR department. It's more marketing than PR but I'm hoping it'll start evolving into a combination of the two.

Due to the fact that I hadn't completed any work experience before let alone in a not-for-profit sector I wasn’t sure entirely what to expect. I thought definitely that a not-for-profit would be “easier” and less stressful. I have nothing to compare my placement here too so I can’t really say if it is easier or not. There are deadlines that I have to meet and ways of writing that I have to adhere to each week. Due to the “family-ness” of the organisation the pieces that I write have to be wholesome and positive. I’m not sure if it can be compared to working for a corporate PR firm but I do have to say adjusting to new methods of writing is difficult.

Woohoo for the first blog post.

Hope to hear from you all

Angela

A Week in the Life of a Communications Officer

There is a saying in the public relations world - there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ week.  Even though I work in the disability sector, for me this definitely stands true.  Although there are certain tasks I do each day, I generally work on something new each week.  

As mentioned in my last blog post, I’m completing my internship with NDS WA where I am the Communications Officer.  Because NDS WA is a small not-for-profit organisation, my role also involves public relations and marketing initiatives.  

The constant in my role is writing, I do a lot of writing every week.  From internal documents such as event management plans to external documents such as media releases, every week is different.  It really is true what the tutors say, you do need to have strong writing skills to succeed in public relations.  

Keeping an eye on the media is also a very important part of my role.  This week, for example, there was a lot of negative media coverage on a particular topic regarding disability.  As the peak organisation for the sector, it’s important to be aware of what the media are saying.

As a mentioned, each week varies...

Last week I was working on an email promoting a training event using MailChimp.  For those of you who haven’t heard of MailChimp, it’s a great website for designing and sending emails, newsletters, invitations and so on.  Not only that, you can share your creation on social media, integrate with services the organisation already uses and track your results.  And the best part is - it’s free to sign up!

This week I’ve been working on a publicity project which involves a training program that NDS WA manages.  I spent the day at one of the sessions to find out more about the program and a newsworthy angle for my media kit.  I spoke to people with a disability, support workers and other people who work within the industry.  It was very interesting to hear their perspective and insights about the program and other experiences.

And next week I’ll be writing articles for an external newsletter and assisting with an event.

I hope this provides you with some useful insights into the role of a Communications Officer for a not-for-profit organisation.

Until next time,

Jess Fuimaono (14557626) 

The Frustrations of Working towards Success at a University

On Monday i had a meeting with some important people from Curtin Business School (CBS). I wrote a report and they all received a copy. They were very excited about my research and were very supportive and full of praise about my findings and recommendations. I felt all warm, fuzzy and appreciated at that moment. That was definitely one of the highlights of the internship.

Unfortunately the employer appraisal is only worth 20%, so if I don’t do the end of year report well then I do not get a good grade. That will not happen but it’s still unfair!

In the last post I discussed the frustrations of a hierarchical organisation. In this post I want to express my frustrations about important people who go on leave when you need them most. How dare they leave!? Just when I got the ball rolling and received the support needed to get projects started! Another bump in the road for me but it will be ok as we are looking for ways to get around that.

I also want to highlight another frustration. Picture this; you spend hours writing up a report and some letters. Then your supervisor scribbles out and corrects things. Then you need to spend another hour correcting the work you thought you did perfectly and to the best of your ability.

Mum says it because my supervisor loves me an only wants what is best for me. It’s one possible explanation. Another possible explanation is that English education in WA high schools is below par. I am not stupid! I studied English Literature at Mount Lawley Senior High School and I am very proud of that but somehow we never learnt what the difference between active and passive English is! If anyone can give examples to share their knowledge I encourage you to do so!

I have also realised that you can’t do anything 100%, someone will always change something that you have written. Everyone has their own style. Slowly but surely I am learning how to write like a PR person…. but I DONT LIKE IT! It is so hard for me! Changing my writing style is like changing your signature, your identity, the very essence of your being! I feel like I’m being a fake. Hopefully it will come more naturally as time goes on.

So for the coming week I have another lot of focus groups that will explore the effectiveness of Curtin’s induction programme for the Chinese Articulation students.

Focus groups= more frustrations! This is the time of mid semester tests!

Wish me luck i will need it!

Ivana Stefanovic

13377836
Bentley campus

PR isn't just writing strategies.

In my first week with the PTA I’ve learnt that PR is about so much more than just creating strategies.

While we have discussed the importance of internal communications in class, I didn’t realise just how much of PR is made up by internal communications.

The PTA is the huge overarching organisation the covers TransPerth, TransWa and has its fingers in numerous pies – such as the Perth City Link (sinking the railway project). Because of this wide employee base, well run internal communications are integral to a cohesive working environment, by keeping everyone informed.

There are several means of doing this, through the intranet and internal publications. I’ve written stories for both and have noted the different writing styles required for web based publications as opposed to print publications. The PTA intranet is very casual and friendly, stories are short and sweet and written informally. On the other hand, the internal newsletter TransNews is slightly longer, slightly more formal and doesn’t refer to the PTA as “we”.

I’ve also written stories for the Perth City Link Rail Alliance internal communications (the Perth City Link Rail Alliance is a combined group of people from the PTA, GHD and John Holland working together to sink part of the railway track). Writing for this was very different to writing for the PTA, I was asked to write a 300 – 400 word story, which was then reduced to 250 after being edited by my supervisor and then again to five short sentences by her supervisor.

In such a big organisation the relationships between the various internal departments and external contractors need to be maintained and developed. I attended a meeting with the Rail Alliance where they discussed various steps of the project that required Heritage Council approval. Also in attendance was a representative of the Heritage Council, to ensure that they were aware of every step the Rail Alliance intended on taking.

Since sinking the railway track is such a huge project, there will be disruptions to public transport users at the Perth Station. I went along on a ‘signage walk’ as various members of the PTA and the Alliance determined where signage should be placed to make smooth the disruptions the public would face. It was interesting to see this side of community consultation – instead of asking community members what they thought and receiving potentially entirely negative feedback, this was a pre-emptive measure aimed at having as little disruptions as possible.

This week I’m getting in to some policy writing, some more stories and some social media research (lucky we’ve all had about a thousand classes on social media!), which I’m really looking forward to.

Hope everyone is enjoying their placements and that all is going well.

=) Tori

Bentley

My first day!

Hi everyone!

So today was my first day of my PR placement. I'm doing my prac in the Corporate Communications department of the Public Transport Authority in East Perth.

Already I've learnt about the need to write in different styles for different internal and external publications (not that I didn't already learn so in class, but it just was reinforced!). Today I wrote several stories for Transnet (the PTA intranet), which I got to write in a relaxed and casual style, very different to the practical, informative, professional manner of media releases.

I'm looking forward to getting in to some different projects over the next month.

Good luck to everyone else starting their pracs!

Tori
Bentley