Patrick: Week 6 (February 21-25)

This week, my boss approached me about putting together a newsletter for the Academy that will appear once each semester. The newsletter will provide those interested in our work with a summation of everything in which we have been involved throughout the semester. It will also keep these individuals informed of any future endeavors for which we may be looking to drum up donor interest and/or support. Finally, a steady newsletter will go a long way in convincing both current and potential donors that the Academy is an "up and coming" organization with an important mission worthy of their continued financial support.

Apart from learning the fundamental importance of producing a viable organizational news bulletin, I learned the importance of building an appropriate brand and image for our organization. For example, as an organization situated in the realm of higher education philanthropy, we exist to provide free-market minded opportunities and programs to university students and faculty. So, in order to illustrate our progress in the form of a donor newsletter, we must be mindful of what our newsletter audience will perceive as acceptable progress. I say this because we may make a considerable amount of internal organizational progress from one given year to the next; however, unless we can provide tangible evidence of students and faculty benefiting from our work, the year will likely be considered a "so-so" one at best. With this in mind, it is easy to see why collecting interviews, testimonials, and pictures from each event or activity we sponsor is a vitally important endeavor. As part of a newsletter, these items will illustrate to donors that their contributions to our organization are going toward productive ends!

Unfortunately for us, the academy's previous director--who oversaw things before my boss arrived--did not quite recognize the true importance of documenting student and faculty involvement with the academy for future use. As a result, one of my main tasks for the week has involved sifting through pictures taken at previous events to see if any of them could be used in our newsletter. This task was frustrating because all of the photos through which I looked proved to be unusable. Humorously enough, the photos were not unusable because they were of bad quality; they were unusable because they were not of students and faculty. As my boss put it, "Donors want to see students and faculty looking engaged; they don't want to see pictures of older men and women like themselves."

Putting my search for suitable newsletter graphics on hold, I transitioned later in the week to drafting and sending out questions for students and faculty to answer about recent Academy programming. I would use information and direct quotes from the responses I received to prepare "write-ups" for the newsletter. Finally, I ended the week by traveling to Kinkos to get an estimate on printing 1,000 to 2,000 copies of the newsletter on high-quality gloss paper. I was excited to get the "green light" on taking an active step toward production.

I hope everyone had a good week!