Internship Overview
Hello, my name is Garrett Hottle and I’ve been interning at SAYL (San Antonio Youth Literacy) for the past 10 weeks. I initially chose to intern at San Antonio Youth Literacy (SAYL) due to its proximity to my home, and because it was an organization my mother had begun volunteering with and recommended to me. Over the course of Spring, my perception of SAYL and non-profit organizations as a whole greatly shifted toward a sense of appreciation and marvel at the volunteers and employees who make these organizations run.
My first few weeks at SAYL required me to interview a variety of teachers, volunteers, and SAYL staff members who had been involved in the Reading Buddies and Book Buddies programs, and author articles about them for the SAYL monthly newsletter. The articles were titled School, Donor, and Volunteer Spotlight of the month, and the process gave me a better understanding of the type of people who consistently volunteer their time to non-profit organizations. I also learned that elementary schools are protected like bank vaults today. Having to speak trough an intercom to identify I wasn’t some crazy murder surprised me, but I understand it.
After the first month I continued my internship by assisting SAYL’s Director of Communications in developing a marketing campaign for “The Big Give”. “The Big Give” is a 24 hour online fundraising event for 501(c)(3) organizations in the San Antonio area. I attended and participated in Big Give workshops with SAYL staff, where I learned some of the best tools and methods non-profit organizations utilize in fundraising. I was also able to learn effective strategies for conducting a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, and I shook off some preconceived doubts regarding the effectiveness of the campaign.
After attending the workshops, I began assisting in the design and coordination of Big Give themed email blast via Constant Contact. The goal of our campaign was to convince our most ardent and enthusiastic volunteers, to agree to become “fundraising champions” – volunteers who raise money on behalf your organization. We also delivered a strategy for attracting individuals outside of SAYL to fundraise for us such as online book club leaders, and independent book shop owners but we never carried it out.
I came up with the idea of shooting video testimonials of our fundraising champions, explaining why they volunteer with SAYL and what makes the organization special. We sent out an email blast asking volunteers willing to be champions, to sign up for an appointment at the SAYL offices to shoot and receive their own shareable Big Give related video, an SAYL T-Shirt, and Reading Buddies themed fiesta medal. I set up our Director of Communication’s iPhone X on a tripod as well as a Reading Buddies themed backdrop in our conference room where we would shoot the testimonials.
We had seven volunteers sign up to become fundraising champions and shoot a “share-your-story” video. I really don’t like shooting video via iPhone but the iPhone X has an incredibly powerful camera and worked nicely. I had a prompt of written interview questions for each volunteer, but I abandoned for each shoot, which I think made the testimonial come off more naturally. Several of our champions who came in to “Share-their-Story” broke down in tears during while giving their testimonials, especially when they talked about seeing improvements in their kids’ reading level. I thought these emotional moments were our best footage and emphatically displayed the true nature of warmth and caring of our SAYL volunteers. Understandably the Director of Communication’s advised to delete the footage, rather than risk embarrassing a Reading Buddy volunteer by posting a testimonial of them crying. The “share-your-story” testimonials finally gave us some original content, and those efforts helped recruit 3 of our top 5 fundraisers for The Big Give. SAYL did substantially better than last year’s Big Give event where SAYL raised $9,000 compared to this year where we raised more than $15,000. In fact, our first volunteer who participated in “share-your-story” promotion, raised more than $1,000 individually. In summary, working on the Big Give campaign gave me a whole new insight in how peer-to-peer fundraising operates, and how effective it can be.
My last month interning at SAYL primarily centered around assisting in the preparation for Book Buddies program. Book Buddies is a program/event where students who participated in the Reading Buddies program get the opportunity to attend a totally free book fair and pick out books to take home at no cost. The first week assisting with Book Buddies required me to travel to the Book Buddies warehouse and sort out donated books. The warehouse was full of pallets of donated books, and volunteers or interns like myself were asked to separate the books by category such as reading level, or quality. The torn or badly damaged books were trashed, and any books containing religion or violence were set aside to be donated elsewhere. We categorized the rest of the children’s books by reading level and placed the good quality 2ndgrade reading books in our Book Buddies trunks. I tried my best to fill each trunk with a variety of books that covered topics like sports, animals, or science, even a few 3rdgrade reading level books. I wanted to include at least one advanced level book covering physics or something S.T.E.M related for what I call “The Goodwill Hunting Test”, but my program manager wasn’t fond of the idea.
After separating the books, I was required to compile list of each participating student and school and create nametags to be placed on SAYL themed wool book bags for each student. Next, I stuffed an informational packet containing a map highlight San Antonio area library, calendars of events their holding this summer, and a couple Reading Buddies bookmarks. Unfortunately, my internship ended before the day of Book Buddies, so I didn’t get to see what I expect was a great day of joy for those 2ndgraders.
In conclusion, I learned a great deal over the course of my internship at SAYL. I got a behind the scenes view of the managing and operations of 501(c)(3) organizations and was able to get familiar with several new platforms to use in marketing campaigns. I found every member of the staff to be incredibly friendly and welcoming. I would definitely recommend interning at SAYL to other students looking for somewhere to intern.
