Everyone tries, or at least should try, to include charity work on his or her resume.
Volunteering once at a pet shelter or raking leaves can end up at the bottom of the page under "community service." Who doesn't love the idea of helping others?
Charities are businesses -- and they're a great way for students to get some real experience.
Think of a charity organization. How did you hear about it? Clips on the evening news come from someone actively pursuing public relations.
Publications like brochures and newsletters come by promotion. Some organizations have people who recruit volunteers and that could be classified as sales.
Habitat for Humanity is one of the best-run charity organizations. Millard Fuller started Habitat for Humanity in 1976 in hopes of ending poverty housing, and since then more than 1,400 affiliates have built more than 125,000 houses around the world.
This organization does a great job of supporting chapters. Headquarters releases media packets, support materials and public relation ideas to chapters. The material is well-written and creative. Maybe Habitat is one of the few charity organizations that realize to be successful it has to sell to the public; not-for-profit organizations don't sell themselves.
The Fort Wayne chapter of Habitat locally kicked off a nation-wide campaign to collect aluminum cans. Local Habitat chapters negotiated top prices from recyclers, and the money raised is used to build homes in the area. From July 1 to Dec. 31, 2002, Fort Wayne Habitat collected more than 15 tons of aluminum cans because of a strong promotional effort throughout the city.
Habitat didn't just make a sign hoping the cans would be collected by the truckload; it planned. Habitat ran banner ads on the sign of one of Fort Wayne's busiest shopping malls. A collection truck became a moving billboard asking people to collect cans.
A booth will be set up at the Three Rivers Festival, which hosts 500,000 guests during the nine-day party. Habitat is involving schools in the can collection with competitions for collecting the most cans between classrooms.
Wal-Mart was an original drop-off site for cans. Leaflets were put in shopping bags at local grocery stores, and these just name the highlights. And the result from this hard work is two homes funded through this campaign that began just last year.
So, you may ask, what does all this have to do with volunteerism? Simple: everything.
Although Habitat does have a small staff, the organization always needs people. Someone could participate in distribution by driving the collection van to drop-off points, and another could help with direct promotion by handing out flyers at the festival.
Maybe Habitat could use someone to design collateral material. The possibilities of using business skills are endless.
Instead of calling a not-for-profit organization to ask if you can take dogs for a walk, ask to put together a brochure to help promote the organization.
I have yet to hear of a charity that isn't thrilled when students volunteer to help with promotion, publication design or just about anything else.
Write to Liz at eabaker@bsu.edu
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