Strategic Organizational Communication
Project Summary
The Rexburg Free Clinic is a medical clinic in Rexburg, Idaho. On their website, they report that their mission is help “individuals and families in our community by promoting health and wellness through providing free, high-quality primary care, and medical services to an underserved population.”
Because they offer their services for free, they are heavily dependent on the donations and kindness of those in the community. With only about 20% of their funding coming from grants, they rely heavily on the generosity of the doctors and healthcare professionals that volunteer there, as well as the donations and help of the community.
In an attempt to help raise money to continue to support the community, the clinic puts on things like yard sales and other events. All of the profits from these events go directly to the clinic so they can keep offering their services for free. This winter, the clinic decided to put on a 1920’s themed gala, with an accompanying silent auction and raffle.
For my project, I decided to help put on this gala. Specifically, I helped with determining what types of donations were needed, who could give them to us, contacting potential donors, tracking what was done, and collecting and organizing donations.
My Work
As mentioned above, my work with the gala was mostly related to donations. The first thing that we needed to do was to determine what types of donations were needed. For example, we needed a location, food to eat at the gala, prizes to raffle off, a band, and things like tables and decorations. Once we determined what we needed, we compiled lists of potential donors for the things that we had come up with as needs.
The next major step was to reach out to all of the businesses that we had thought of. For things like food, rather than asking for actual food donations, we asked for in-store credit from places like Broulims. This enabled us to get exactly what we needed and avoid food going bad before the event. We got gift cards to raffle off from places like Texas Road House Grill and Mill Hollow. We were able to get a location and other resources donated from the Tavern.
After that, we needed to gather the donations that we had, keep track of who had given us what, make record of if it had been picked up, and organize it all so that we would have it ready to go for the gala. Some of the gifts needed to be organized into gift baskets so we had to make those as well.
The last thing the needed to be done was to put on the gala. The gala will be Saturday, March 18 from 7-10. For that to be succesful, we have had to find volunteers. I will be there behind the scenes, helping to set everything up, put things out, and help with anything else that needs to be done over the course of the event.
What I’ve Learned
There were a couple of things that I learned. First, I learned how important it is that everyone does there part. If there was a week that I didn’t get everythign done that I said I would a week where someone else did not, it set everyone back, not just that one person. For a team to run successfuly and for an event to go smoothly, everyone needs to pull their weight and commit to doing what they say they will do.
The other big thing that I learned is that there is so much more that goes into events like this than I had previously thought. This is a relatively small event and even still, there were so many things that we needed to be aware of that I would have never thought of if I was doing it on my own.
Project Materials and Time Report
Above is the poster that was made for the event. Below is the Google Sheet that we used to keep track of all of our donations as well as the Google Sheet that I kept my time on.
Conclusion
I had a wonderful time working on this project. I am so grateful to have been able to help out the community and be able to contribute to something that can help so many people. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn here!