GROUP MEMBERS:

Joseph Christianson
Matthew Jekel
Sarah Smith
Jodi Taylor

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

We did our social change project with the Mt. Baker Chapter of the American Red Cross; the main focus of our project was concerned with the recruitment of new and future interns and volunteers. When we first met with Linnea Broker, the Volunteer Services Director, she had expressed a great deal of interest in our social change project, focusing more on the marketing efforts, as they did not have the time or resources to adequately market the internship program. The goals and objectives that we wanted to accomplish throughout this project were to recruit more interns for the Red Cross and to get the American Red Cross’ name spread throughout college campuses in Bellingham in order to stimulate demand and give the American Red Cross Mt. Baker Chapter marketing tools that they could use for years to come to help recruit more interns.

Ways in which we accomplished these goals was by making a brochure that is tailored specifically to the internship program, taking current photos of the interns and the building headquarters, and making a current intern tri-fold structure to have as a table top display at internship and job fairs around Whatcom and Skagit County. We also made an internship program PowerPoint presentation to showcase at internship fairs around Whatcom and Skagit county to grasp more people’s attention and promote the Mt. Baker Chapter of the American Red Cross at the non-profit internship fair at Western Washington University.

We obtained our goals using communication as a key component for our group’s success in order to meet our deadline of October 24 for Western’s internship fair. Communicating with each other was easier for our group because we all live on North Garden Street, so we would have group meetings as we were walking home from class each day. We also communicated weekly by phone to give updates on where we each were on our part of the project.

The outcomes our project accomplished include giving the American Red Cross Mt. Baker Chapter marketing tools that they can use for many years at internship fairs around the Bellingham area. The PowerPoint presentation that we made will be used to make the Red Cross stand out more at internship fairs to grasp students attention and will further be shown to potential interns in order to give them a more in-depth idea of the internship program available at the Mt. Baker Chapter. In creating this PowerPoint template it will be easier for the staff to periodically update the PowerPoint as positions available change, also making it less time consuming. By promoting the Red Cross internship program as current student volunteers and interns at the internship fair, students felt more comfortable coming up to us and talking to us about the internship program. Jodi was a marketing intern this summer and could give people a first hand perspective of the experiences she had gained by being an intern with the Red Cross. With college students feeling more comfortable around us then the Red Cross representatives, we were able to increase the attendance at the volunteer orientation on November 8, 2006. With the marketing tools that we have given the American Red Cross, so far we netted 21 recruits from the internship fair alone, which was a significant increase from last year.

We know that as a group, the tools and resources that we have created will provide the Red Cross more interns and volunteers for years to come. The experiences they have given us all by getting to know the staff and seeing their faces as we presented our final projects to them has given us all more satisfaction than we thought we could have received. It is strange that something that comes so naturally to us, like creating a brochure, a PowerPoint presentation, or a tri-fold display, meant a great deal to them. It gave us fulfillment in knowing that we have done something to really help out this corporation that has too few resources to do it on their own.