Causewave

For the past three months, I’ve gotten the opportunity to be the Event Planning and Marketing intern at Causewave Community Partners. Alongside my supervisors, and other members of the Causewave team, I have been able to learn so much about nonprofit communications.

Nonprofits often work with a small budget and in a small time frame, so it is all hands on deck to roll out a campaign or event. I was able to witness campaign planning and meetings with potential clients throughout my internship. I learned quickly that objectives and goals need to be defined efficiently. 

I learned a lot about research, content creation, event planning, and social media analysis. I carried out research often, most notably about how to run hybrid/ virtual events, as Causewave is planning to have their annual “Matchstick Prize” in this format over the summer. I created a blog post based on my findings about virtual events, which has been published on the Causewave website: “5 Essential Tips For Nonprofits Running Virtual Events in 2021”. 

I did a lot of work with Google Sheets, carrying out a social media analysis for their “Lovefest” event to keep track of engagement online, as well as creating a content calendar for their most recent campaign @itsuptoyouflx (a campaign about communicating correct information about the COVID vaccine). I also used Google Sheets to compile social media content from sponsors (to recognize their work), as well as compile survey data from SurveyMonkey as they were switching to new survey software. 

As far as content creation, I created some social media graphics for the Lovefest campaign on Valentine’s day (as pictured in my last internship blog post), as well as creating an e-blast from a template about the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning (a Causewave client)  and their upcoming webinar at the end of April (pictured below). 

My favorite part of my internship was being able to sit in on meetings with staff and clients. It was great to learn more about some of the projects that the organization was involved with. During these meetings, I often took notes and was sometimes given tasks to complete for a follow-up meeting (often tasks involving research). A lot of the meetings focused on campaign and event planning will be useful as I finish up my college career and any other internships I may decide to pursue. 

Overall, I enjoyed my time working with Causewave. Before starting this internship, I had some knowledge of how nonprofits operated, but it was very limited. I now see how much organization and delegation goes into running a nonprofit agency, and how staff members are always willing to help one another. I do wish that the internship was in-person, as I believe it would have been interesting to see the day-to-day of physically being in the office. Nonetheless, I am so grateful that Causewave was able to adapt during this time and offer a remote internship. I believe that the knowledge I gained throughout my time will help me in future internships and opportunities.