To wrap up my YWCA Internship blog, I have quite the announcement to make. In late October, Courtney the Development and Communications Associate at the YW, left her position. Since she was responsible for many of the day to day activities, Ellen asked me to come in and fill in on a part-time, temporary basis. The YW then opened up the position for applications... 

Well, I applied... and I am not the YWCA Greater Pittsburgh Development and Communications Associate! 

This is a dream job for me. I am working in Development for a women's rights focused nonprofit in Pittsburgh. And I still have a semester of school left! It is going to be a very busy, but rewarding next few months. 

P.S. I think the email signature makes it really official!

Day 27: Friday September 27th 9am to 1pm

Today is my last day at the YWCA Greater Pittsburgh. It is definitely with a heavy heart that I leave this internship. I have really enjoyed my time here and have learned more than I ever expected.  I hope to continue to work with the YW in the future as much as possible.

I spent most of my last day wrapping up some of my ongoing projects. I finalized my membership proposal to leave for Ellen, and updated the copy for the RJA Invitations with the chosen Awardees. The Social Media job description has also been completed, and I prepared to explain how I have been running the Twitter to Ellen.

But... to our surprise, my last day was cut short.

While Ellen was out running an errand, we had what was thought to be a fire drill. Turns out there might have actually been a fire at the YW. It possibly could have just been smoke from the grill at Nathans as well. But, either way, the fire alarms went off and all the YW employees headed outside. And then the alarms continued to go off, again, and again... They couldn't get them to reset successfully. So, Ellen, Courtney and I went to grab some lunch. While at lunch we got the call; the YW was closed for the day.

My last day at the YW was cut a bit short, but we still made time to have a nice lunch and reflect on a great internship!

Day 25: Thursday September 12th 4pm - 7:30pm

This week was the YWCA Young Leaders Board event Cocktails for a Cause. After school, I came over to the YWCA to help out before the event. We finished packing up raffle items, selling a few raffle tickets to those who couldn't make it, and carrying everything over to Tavern 245. Courtney and I worked the registration table. We had a guest list of pre-purchased tickets and sponsors names to check off when guests arrived. Here are some of the details about the event.

• Tickets were $25 a person
• Raffle tickets for the big items were $10 a piece

              - Those included:
                        - 1 night stay at Bedford Spring
                        - 1 night stay at Renaissance Hotel in Pittsburgh 
                        - and iPad Mini

• Other tickets were sold 5 for $5 or an arms-length for $10

               - That raffle included:
                        -  wine and vodka baskets
                        - several restaurant gift-cards
                        - a Coach purse
                        - and several other great prizes

• The signature drink for the night benefited the YWCA  

 
Overall the event seemed to be a great success. The Young Leaders were all happy with the turn out. I believe the final number raised for the YWCA Greater Pittsburgh was around $4,000!

Day 22: Monday August 19th 9am to 5:15pm

Monday was one of our biggest successes with a post on social media. We have 20 clicks on the bitly link for the "Disney Princesses for Equal Pay" YouTube video (below). Throughout the morning the office was buzzing with talk of this video. Our CEO, Maggie, thought it was hilarious and brilliant, as did I. After posting this video in a tweet and on Facebook, Ellen called me into her office. We talked about the word "we" and my use of it in the posts and in emails. 

Also on this day, I updated changes in the Young Leaders Board contact list and I mailed all of the tickets out to the members. Kim, one of the Young Leaders, asked me to create a spreadsheet to keep track of which tickets I gave which members. 

Fun Facts by Ellen: 

• Don't use the word I in an email if at all possible. Simply saying "attached is the ..." instead of "I have attached the ..." is better. 
• This allows you to achieve your largest goal in the office... Make your boss look good. 
• Not including I allows the person you are contacting to believe that you were not the one doing all of the work. 

Day 23: Wednesday August 21st 9am to 5pm

Wednesday was also a really great day for social media. When looking for some additional content to blog about in the morning, I stumbled upon the hashtag #hijabuppropet, which means hijab outcry. This movement began after a pregnant woman in Sweden was attacked for wearing a hijab. Women (as well as men and children) around the world dawned hijabs and took to twitter to voice their support for this woman and women everywhere. I encourage you to search the hashtag #hijabuppropet on twitter and read more about this amazing movement. 

Some of my other tasks this day included creating a job description for a social media volunteer, having a meeting with Ellen about old projects, researching mobile apps for photo releases, and updating the Tribute to Women planning calendar. 

Fun Facts by Ellen:

• Manage your emails, don't let your emails manage you.

Day 21: Wednesday August 14th 9am to 5pm

On Monday, I had to take the day off to move into my new apartment! It's much nicer than my last place, but unfortunately up two flights of stairs... It was a LONG day. 

But, on Wednesday, I came back to the YW and got back to work. The day consisted of a bunch of smaller tasks, mostly for Cocktails for a Cause. My first task was to order the raffle tickets for the grand prizes. Through our efforts of request letters, the Young Leaders Board secured a one night stay at the Renaissance Hotel with breakfast, a one night stay at Bedford Springs also with breakfast, and an iPad mini. These items were part of the more expensive raffle. Each ticket was $10. The Young Leaders Board members each have 18 tickets to try to sell prior to the event. 

Using last year's tickets as a model, I ordered 250 raffle tickets for this years event. The site I used was kwiktickets.com. It was pretty easy to use, and it gave you a preview of what your ticket would look like. I sent the copy for the tickets to Ellen, Kim and Amber for approval, then ordered them with the YW credit card. Since the tickets will not be in until later this week and we want to get them out ASAP, I also addressed envelopes to send them to the board members. 

The remainder of my day was spent working on social media. I scheduled content for this week and next (about 30 tweets total). I also decided to start using bitly to shorten links instead of the built in link shortener on HootSuite. This will allow me to track the amount of clicks per link and to reuse the same link when tweeting about the same thing multiple times. This should help to track the success of our social media posts. 

Day 19: Monday August 5th 9am to 5pm

This week my main job was to create a request for the Robinson Foundation. I was able to use older requests as examples, pull some of the copy from them, and also do my own research. I used GuideStar to learn more about the Robinson Foundation and what they have given to in the past. We also looked closely at how much they have given, and what would be an appropriate amount to ask more. Ellen helped me a lot with this project. She really showed me all of the different resources that I could use to make the best request possible. 

Day 20: Wednesday August 7th 9am to 5pm

On Wednesday, Ellen and I went through the proposal word for word. We restructured almost every sentence to make it the most effective. One of the main goals was to shorten the letter, in an effort to make it more readable. This was a great learning experience. We also spend some time focusing on the pictures we included, what segments would be pulled out in block quotes, what order to put the paragraphs in, and what sentences to put in bold. Every aspect of this letter was well thought out, looked over, and then looked over again. Below is the final product. 

Day 18: Wednesday July 24th 9am to 5pm

Last week I was unable to come into the office, because I was at the beach! The beach is my absolute favorite place, and it was great to spend a week there with my best friend and our mom's. And of course on the way back we stopped in DC for the weekend to see baby Talia. She's getting so big! (Pictures below)

When I got back to work on Wednesday, I had a bunch of various jobs to work on. The first was the Day of Giving. I went through the YW's profile from last year to make all the updates I could. I changed the list of names under the board of directors, editing the programing, and even the statement from the CEO. Laura, who normally fills out information like this, helped me determine a budget number to include and make sure that I had everything correct. 

My next job was working on request letters for the Young Leaders Board event, Cocktails for a Cause. I had previously completed a mail merge for the companies for which I had contact information. But, there were some companies without any. I created a more general letter and did research to find the proper department at each company. I then addressed these letters to a Manager within that department and sent them out hoping for a response. 

After a few other random jobs, I spent the rest of my day creating a PowerPoint template for the entire YWCA Greater Pittsburgh to use. Consistency has been an issue within the YW's communications, and Ellen thought that if all PowerPoints were created within the same template, we could start to create a consistent look for the organization. It turned out really well. I based it off of the YWCA USA's official PowerPoint template, yet made it our own. 

Fun Facts by Ellen:

• Always search for the answer, read everything, and double check, before asking. 
  

Day 16: Monday July 8th 9am to 5pm

After sending some emails, finishing EITC packets, working on a project for the Young Leaders Board, and sending postcards to new members, Courtney, Ellen, and I had a meeting about social media. During this meeting, we talked about the best way to manage our social media outs, collect content, and organize that content. It was definitely a pretty stressful meeting. Ellen pushed me very hard to figure out the best way to layout the Communications Calendar and make it easy enough for other employees to understand and contribute to. On Wednesday, I spent much of the day putting this together. 

Day 17: Wednesday July 10th 9am to 5pm

We ended up coming up with one Excel document, with several tabs. The first of which is the summary sheet. This has the dates running across the top and events and topics down the left side. Blocks of color are used to indicate on what date a specific topic or event should be promoted. The rest of the tabs are for the Constant Contact email, Twitter, Facebook, and the website. I had the liberty of setting up the Twitter and Facebook tabs. 

On each tab the weeks are listed with the number of blank spaces for the amount of posts that should occur that week. Across the top are columns for date, time, topic, copy, graphics, and links. This basically keeps all of the information for each post organized and in one place. The Twitter and Facebook tabs look very similar. 

We also decided in this meeting to start utilizing HootSuite more. This allows someone to spend one chunk of time per week to post all of the social media content and schedule it to come out when desired. It's really a great website to use for social media for an organization. 

Day 15: Wednesday July 3rd 9am to 5pm

On Monday, I took a surprise day off after the first Great Grandchild was born on my mom's side of the family. We took a spur of the moment trip to Washington, D.C. to see baby Talia! She is beautiful! 

Now back to my internship... This Wednesday started off a bit different that normal. The Heinz Endowments has a program for youth to give out grants to fund projects they are passionate about. The theme is sustainability. On Tuesday, I got a call from Ellen about an information session Wednesday morning that someone needed to attend to get the RFP (request for proposal). She thought I would enjoy the experience, so I went to represent the YWCA. 

The session was at the Children's Museum. Each group of high school students presented their ideas from projects to the people interested in applying for them and then information was collected to receive the RFP. It was interesting to hear about everyone's ideas and see several people from Shaler (my alma mater). One project perfectly fit with our TechGYRLS program, so we are going to apply. 

I completed a bunch of tasks this day once I got into the office. It was a very busy week. I prepped for a social media meeting with Ellen and Courtney on Monday morning. I reviewed our membership research to present at the meeting as well. I also made some more of the EITC packets, since they ran out last week. And right before I left I started a mail merge to ask for donations for the Young Leaders Board event Cocktails for a Cause. 

The main portion of my day was spent editing the content on our Pittsburgh Foundation Day of Giving profile. This day encourages people to give to registered non-profits by matching a portion of their gifts. 

Fun Facts by Ellen:
Ellen took the time to explain the four types of foundations to me.

1. Private - created by individuals, own board, own mission statement
2. Corporate - sometimes independent of the actual corporation. Ex. Alcoa. Sometimes they are tied to the profit and loss statement of the company. This makes the amount donated smaller and less consistant. 
3. Community - involved in giving back. A lot of individual foundations make it up. Community foundation manages them financially. Has investors. Development officers encourage people to establish funds. Giving officers determine who gets grants. Can be as small as $10,000 to invest. 
4. Company - established through companies. Trusts. Wealthy people give money to investment companies and the companies give to organizations. 

Day 13: Monday June 24th - 9am to 5pm

This day was basically a repeat of last Wednesday. I worked some more to develop our social media and schedule posts for the upcoming week. 

Day 14: Wednesday June 26th - 9am to 3:30pm

Below are some pictures from the EITC folders I put together for Laura and Ellen to send to local technology companies asking for a donation. The Educational Improvement Tax Credit allows companies to donate $100,000 to an approved non-profit program and write off $90,000 on their taxes. This is where a huge portion of the TechGYRLS program funding comes from. 

One of the sheets in the folders were printed at AlphaGraphics, so I got to go on a bit of a walk to pick them up as well as drop off a few things along the way. I put together about 25 of these folders and then did some research on companies to send them to. The YW has a list of companies that they solicite every year, but this year we worked on a new list. There were about 105 companies that I went through and found contact information for. I was also responsible for determining the ask amount. I researched stock prices and the company size to determine the amount we should ask for on these "cold calls". 

The next step was to  create a mail merge of the solicitation letter with the information from the spreadsheet. I had never done a mail merge before, so this was a great skill to learn.

Fun Facts by Ellen:

• Always enter data into a spread sheet in the smallest and most consistent fields. This makes a mail merge much easier.