The first week of my internship was a really great educational experience filled with responsibility.
Day 1: Monday May 6th - 9am to 5pm
The beginning of my first day at the YWCA was a typical introduction. I met my co-intern, Stephanie. We went through a run down of all the major projects we would be completing. We got our computers set up, mapped several drives, and set up passwords. We went and got our IDs made and then had a meeting about the Tribute to Women event coming up on May 30th.
Stephanie and I got our first assignment during this meeting. We were to create the Program Book for TTW (Tribute to Women). Our first task was to create the program notes. This is a layout to send to the design company so that they can put the book together for printing. It's a basic layout of page numbers and what is on that page. The tricky part is to put all of the ads in the right place. Sponsors pay a large sum of money for these ads and we want to please them all. We started by putting our high level sponsors ads in the front and then worked our way through the book, basing it on last year's. We matched up the bios of the awardees with ads that made sense to what they do. Some of the ads were actually congratulatory images for the awardees. Laying the book out to be visually appealing was also something we had to worry about. This was somewhat difficult since there were still several ads that had not been submitted.
Our next task was to rework the bios for each awardee. We made them all consistent with using just first names and put them all in the same tense. Some were just a few adjustments and others needed completely rewritten. This took us to then end of our day and a bit into the next day.
Day 2: Wednesday May 8th - 9am to 5pm
The second day began with finishing up the bios for the awardees from the day before. We really spent most of our day finishing up the Program Book (all other time was spent at lunch with Ellen and cleaning out our desks). At lunch, Ellen went over what we had done the day before on the Program Book and made some changes. She provided great advice about the best way to complete the job. After lunch I rewrote the welcome letter from the CEO and President of the board. Stephanie and I updated the lists for board members, updated the bio for the Mistress of Ceremonies, corrected the list of sponsors, and created the table of contents after all of the other parts were in place.
After all of this was completed, I sat down with Ellen to go over all of the sections before sending them out to the design company. She provided me with some helpful writing tips that make a welcome letter sound much more appealing to donors.
Day 1: Monday May 6th - 9am to 5pm
The beginning of my first day at the YWCA was a typical introduction. I met my co-intern, Stephanie. We went through a run down of all the major projects we would be completing. We got our computers set up, mapped several drives, and set up passwords. We went and got our IDs made and then had a meeting about the Tribute to Women event coming up on May 30th.
Stephanie and I got our first assignment during this meeting. We were to create the Program Book for TTW (Tribute to Women). Our first task was to create the program notes. This is a layout to send to the design company so that they can put the book together for printing. It's a basic layout of page numbers and what is on that page. The tricky part is to put all of the ads in the right place. Sponsors pay a large sum of money for these ads and we want to please them all. We started by putting our high level sponsors ads in the front and then worked our way through the book, basing it on last year's. We matched up the bios of the awardees with ads that made sense to what they do. Some of the ads were actually congratulatory images for the awardees. Laying the book out to be visually appealing was also something we had to worry about. This was somewhat difficult since there were still several ads that had not been submitted.
Our next task was to rework the bios for each awardee. We made them all consistent with using just first names and put them all in the same tense. Some were just a few adjustments and others needed completely rewritten. This took us to then end of our day and a bit into the next day.
Day 2: Wednesday May 8th - 9am to 5pm
The second day began with finishing up the bios for the awardees from the day before. We really spent most of our day finishing up the Program Book (all other time was spent at lunch with Ellen and cleaning out our desks). At lunch, Ellen went over what we had done the day before on the Program Book and made some changes. She provided great advice about the best way to complete the job. After lunch I rewrote the welcome letter from the CEO and President of the board. Stephanie and I updated the lists for board members, updated the bio for the Mistress of Ceremonies, corrected the list of sponsors, and created the table of contents after all of the other parts were in place.
After all of this was completed, I sat down with Ellen to go over all of the sections before sending them out to the design company. She provided me with some helpful writing tips that make a welcome letter sound much more appealing to donors.
- Don't use infinitives, they take away the personal connection
- Don't take the donors out of the equation. Instead of saying we, say together we.
- List words in groups of threes based on length.
- Always use a visual image over non-visual adjectives. Ex. forging a trail
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