How to become a
nationally recognised organisation: with absolutely no budget
The first question I
asked my supervisor was where they want to be in five years time?
Answer: We want to be
recognised by the industry, government, members and community as the leader in
this industry in Western Australia and we want our training business to be
recognised nationally as the leader in hospitality training.
My second question asked
what our marketing and public relations budget is, in order for us to reach
these goals.
Answer: There is no
budget.
.........................................................................................
I began my internship with Clubs WA in September 2013, after I was mid-application for a vacation program with a Western AUstralian mining company. During filling out my application I realised that I had no real-world experience working in the public relations industry and apart from the marks that I had earned from writing essays and participating in speeches, the recruiters would have no idea whether I would actually be any good at the role I was applying for.
The next day I scrolled through the internet looking for internships and found a small advertisement on Gumtree looking for 'Marketing and Event interns' at a small not-for-profit based in Cockburn Central.
Here begins my entry-level position within the public relations and marketing sector.
Clubs WA is one of the largest membership based not-for-profit organisations in Western Australia and is the governing body of licensed sporting and community clubs in WA. It represent the interests of licensed clubs to relevant WA ministers and governing bodies and its goal is to be the 'voice of the club community'.
Each state has a sister organisation in each state and its parent body is Clubs Australia. Western Australian clubs have extremely restrictive legislation placed on them compared to other states and the purpose of Clubs WA is to give member clubs advice and information on how to work with these restrictions to ensure their clubs remain successful and viable.
From September 2013 - June 2014 I worked at Clubs WA writing copy for the monthly magazine and website, sent out media release about events, and helped the Marketing and Events Coordinator with two big upcoming events, the Annual Awards of Excellence and the Annual General Meeting and Trade Expo.
Both events were hectic to work on and all I had to do was the simple tasks that my supervisor asked me to do, including putting together PowerPoint presentations, hundreds of invitations and the promotion of the event through our various communication tools.
At the end of May 2014, my supervisor left for a six-month African adventure and asked me to step in for her for whilst she is gone. I am now the Marketing and Events Officer and love every single minute of it. While my title is marketing, the role is much more PR-orientated.
So I have given myself a six month timeframe to do all I can to achieve the goal my supervisor gave me, on my very first day - to make Clubs WA famous (in a great way).
However, like most not-for-profits we don't have a lot of money to play around with. 90 per cent of my budget goes towards our events and what is left over goes towards marketing and PR efforts. Everyday is a challenge and it's great.
The majority of our funding comes from the hospitality training courses that we provide through our training portal, Hospitality Alliance Training (HAT). HAT is a nationally recognised leader in training courses throughout Australia and has successfully trained more than 50,000 individuals.
The rest of our funding comes from membership fees, sponsors and some government grants.
So I am two-and-a-bit months into my new role and while it's insanely challenging, especially whilst still enrolled in a full course-load, I love every minute of it.
I look forward to sharing more of my adventure with you over the next few weeks, and good luck to each of you in your own internships!
Holly Hazel
3 comments:
Hello Holly,
I am Isabelle from Mauritius Island. I found your post very interesting and inspiring. It gives a real insight of what is PR in a Not-For-Profit Organisation. Your placement seems to be great.
As students we learned to write PR Plans and to think about strategies a company could implement. However, we were never asked to do it with a small/no budget. I believe when your supervisor gave you that answer you must have been quite surprised and not expecting that. I realised myself that it is a hard task. My mother in law manages an NGO in Mauritius and each time I try to give her ideas to do some publicity she has to remind me that she does not have the budget.
You must have felt so proud and scared when your supervisor asked you to step in for her. It must be an amazing experience for you to be THE marketing and event officer on your own. I believe it must be quite challenging too, particularly to do it on a part-time basis along with the courses.
It is true that as PR student we did learn 'time management' during those three years at University, but I find it quite difficult to do both. Indeed, my supervisor is giving me a lot of work and responsibilities and I sometime feel like I cannot concentrate on my courses and on my internship at the same time. It actually is the reason why I did not opt for an NGO as organisation; I wanted to be sure of being able to do both.
But I was not expecting that much work though… you can read my posts on these links:
http://pr393reflectiveblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/you-should-expect-to-answer-phone-and.html
http://pr393reflectiveblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/public-relations-being-versatile.html
I wish you all the best for the rest of your challenge, make the most of it! And I hope you will achieve the objective!
Isabelle
Wow Holly
Sounds like a tough gig. Being asked to change the world with nothing by your side to help you out.
It is very interesting to know how other not-for-profit organisations get things done. Of course being a not-for-profit RugbyWA is the same, all the money that comes in, goes straight back into community rugby.
It's something I overhear quite often, "it's not in the budget," "there's not enough in the budget," "budget won't allow it," etc.
I guess it's all well and good to have great ideas, but what it comes down to is the budget.
Hi Isabelle and Richard,
Working for an NFP is definitely eye-opening, challenging and rewarding!
For a PR unit last semester we were asked to develop a public relations strategy for a not-for-profit performing arts theatre and I though we developed some interesting and innovative strategies, but given the chance to redo the assignment (now knowing how NFP's work) I would scrap half of the strategies and just focus on a couple that required almost zero budget.
Completely agree with you Isabelle on time management. Nothing in uni compared me for how organised I would need to be for this job. It took me a couple of months to develop a good system but I am starting to get the hang of it now. I now have an excel spreadsheet with all my deadlines broken down into monthly, weekly and daily tasks. It sounds super nerdy and a bit over-the-top but the first thing I learnt in this job is that you need to be on top of things!
Good luck to both of you in your internships and i'll make sure to check out your blogs soon Isabelle.
~ Holly
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