Chris M Langley
For my Practicum Project, I volunteered at the Whatcom Dispute Resolution Center, located in downtown Bellingham off 13 Prospect Street. The main objective that Iris Gibson, my supervisor, wanted me to achieve while at the WDRC was to assist her in planning and coordinating the organization’s Donor Appreciation Dinner Event. This event occurs every year on March 30th. The Annual Donor Appreciation Dinner is an event recognizing donors for their contributions and financial support, while also recognizing other volunteers for their hard work and support. The theme of the event is “Peace.” In addition to planning the event, I will also be attending and helping facilitate the event, which will be held on Thursday, March 30th from 5:00-6:30 P.M. in the Mount Baker Theatre Encore Room. Furthermore, I will be at the WDRC on March 27th and 29th making sure that all decorations, food and other supplies are ordered and ready for the event. In addition to setting up, facilitating the event, and helping clean up the dinner afterword’s, the bulk of my work involves the planning and administrative tasks for this project that I worked on in the WDRC office. Iris and I coordinated many of the logistics of the event. I was responsible for helping Iris and other staff members in sending invitation e-mails and making phone-call reminders to 600 donors. I was required to send press releases and update online calendars for this specific event as well. In addition, I was tasked with selecting poems for the gift baskets, creating a power point for the event, and helping Iris in additional ways so that this event would be a success! See Appendix B, Section A for some documents I worked on for the event.
I was one of 80 volunteers. Volunteers help keep administrative costs to a minimum, so donations go to keeping the WDRC’s services accessible. I began my practicum project volunteering at the WDRC on January 27th. I have spent a total of 25 hours in the WDRC office as of last Friday, March 10th. I would spend around 4 hours every Friday working in the office on the coordination and planning of the event, along with other administrative work.
My first two weeks began with helping Iris out with administration work. As the quarer has moved on, I slowly started to work on practicum related work. I created a power point for the event. This included choosing photos of people at last year’s annual donor event holding signs that stated what peace meant to them. I also in chose various statistics to put in the Power Point regarding the WDRC. February mostly consisted of planning for the event and other administrative work. On March 3rd, I began making phone calls to donors. There were 600 donors to call, but thankfully I had Iris’ help, along with the aid of 5 other volunteers.
My phone call script looked something like the following:
“Hello, my name is Chris, and I’m a volunteer with the Whatcom Dispute Resolution Center. I am calling to personally thank you for your support and to invite you and your family (colleagues if it is a business) to our appreciation event on Thursday, March 30th, from 5:00-6:30pm at the Mount Baker Theatre Encore Room. Please RSVP to Daniel at (360)-676-0122, amc@whatcomdrc.org, or using the link on the invitation email. Take care, and thanks again for your support!”
I always get nervous before making phone calls for some reason. However, with repetition and practice, I became a lot calmer and comfortable making these phone calls.
In the future, I will be making sure that everything is ordered and stored at the WDRC for the event. This includes decorations, food, and other supplies. I will also be interfacing with some donors on the 29th as well. I will be doing all of this on March 27th and March 29th. Finally, I will attend and facilitate the event on Thursday, March 30th from 5:00-6:30 P.M.
Note: The Italicized Objectives are my personal objectives.
Aside from planning the Annual Donor Appreciation Dinner Event, Iris assigned me with different tasks, unrelated to the project at hand, but that gave me a perspective of what working in an organization might look like. My other tasks I did for Iris included the following:
· Promote other mediation seminars and workshops through updating online calendars and sending press releases. (Note: see Appendix B, Section B for work samples of events I promoted).
· I will be researching and improving outreach systems so we can reach more people for these events.
· Making schedules for volunteers and other staff members.
· Typed up Iris’ notes on Word Doc.