Internship Blog - MEDJ 498

Week seven of my internship at the Bloomsburg Public Library in the Marketing department was actually quite exciting because it was the week that Raise The Region took place. While I had heard of it during my first week at the library, I didn't actually what it even was until two weeks ago. Raise The Region is a 30-hour online fundraising event done once a year. This year it started on March 11th at 6:00:00 PM and ended on March 12th at 11:59:59 PM. This annual event is organized by the First Community Foundation Partnership with the Blaise Alexander Family Dealerships as the main sponsor. It's not just a donation drive, it's a competition. Nonprofits across the region are trying to raise as much money as possible and there are leaderboards dividing them into categories like large, medium, and small organizations. The top three in each category by the end won extra money from Blaise Alexander Family Dealership. Additionally, organizations had the opportunity to win prizes a...

Week six of my internship in the Marketing Department of the Bloomsburg Public Library was a bit more productive and proactive then previous weeks. A lot of what I did this week revolved around outreach and promotion, both digitally and physically. On Monday, I helped with preparation for the upcoming Raise The Region fundraising event which is a regional, yearly campaign set to take place the following week. I assisted in stuffing and sending out letters that were written to inform people about the event and encourage donations. It would be nearly impossible to send out a letter to every patron in our system so instead we focused on only sending them to individuals who had donated 100 dollars or more in the past year as well as members of the board and the Friends of The Library. It was interesting to see how organizations with such a large population of users strategize to reach their most likely donors. It wasn't just about sending information and begging for money, it was abou...

Week five of my internship with the Marketing Department at the Bloomsburg Public Library was by far the most exciting because it was finally time for Murder Mystery! This was the third Murder Mystery fundraiser, and I was there for the first two as well so it's been really interesting to see how these events evolve. This years was called "Murder In The Library - Chapter Three: Publish or Perish" and the premise centered around a fictional publishing company called “Linden Tree Publishing,” which had narrowed down a contest to four finalists competing to become the next big author. The winner was set to be announced at the “Susquehanna Valley Writer’s Festival,” hosted right at the library. Guests got to meet the authors and their esteemed judges before, of course, a murder took place. Each night featured a different victim and a different murderer, which kept things fresh and unpredictable. And meant we could possibly raise more money by convincing people to come twice! ...

My fourth week as an Emergent Media intern in the Marketing Department of the Bloomsburg Public Library was focused a lot on preparing for the 3rd annual Murder Mystery event with a mixture of creative work and problem solving. It was nice to finally feel like there was some sort of goal and I was contributing to something.  Monday, I learned more about how nonprofits fundraise and also did a little inventory. First, I was introduced to the organization  Candid  which is a nonprofit database that helps organizations maintain public profiles with information about their mission, programs and finances. Funders and donors often use it or websites like it to research nonprofits so keeping information updated and accurate is really important for transparency and credibility. However, the purposes I needed it for were finding EIN numbers for the partner libraries that were also going to be benefiting from the Murder Mystery event. EIN is an acronym for Employee Identification N...