The First Four

Hi All,

I have just started my prac at Landcare Australia and It's going really well. So far I have done 4 days over 2 weeks and am settling into the position. Upcoming in September is Landcare week so the PR manager and I are currently getting a lot organised for that. As a not for profit organisation a lot of the PR is outsourced through Sydney PR firms where the head office is. I’m still to see if this is actually a good decision of Landcare WA. I’ve been given a lot of freedom with many tasks from which I can choose to do. Which I feel is both good and bad. It's good because I can start off with what I’m comfortable doing, but I think that because working in PR is so new to me I may need a bit more guidance to what is most important, how long it should take me to do and if I’m doing it correctly. I have been given the Landcare Heroes website pretty much to myself to ‘make my baby’ and do what I see fit to it which should be a great and really interesting challenge.

So far my main tasks have included making a key findings report from survey results they collected earlier in the year, sourcing potential corporate partners to participate in our corporate volunteering days, writing out project summaries of applicants for the Landcare Heroes Awards and drafting up a few media releases.

There seems to be a lot of red tape that we need to get through to get anything approved which is frustrating. When sending out media release for the larger campaigns- For example with Landcare week, we first need to send any media releases to the Sydney office to approve and change, who then send it to Porter Novelli who changes it again and then sends it off from Sydney to the WA media. I can see how Amy- the PR Manager gets frustrated with the amount of time everything takes because they have be so careful with what is said so they don’t offend anyone. It’s disappointing we are unable to make many media contacts ourselves as a result of this, and the ones we do have, we are unable to use.

All in all through I am really happy with how everything is going and I am already learning a lot about PR in the real world. I’d love to hear from anyone else working in not-for-profit who has had the same experience or even if it is a totally different situation for them.

Until next time,

Kristy