Progress Report, December 3

Public Relations Event: Book Fundraiser for library at Providence Christian Academy

Overview:
Our book collection is in full swing. We have gotten things in to place, so at this point, Sharon and I are making sure that our publicity stays intact. We also want to make sure that we are collecting as many books as we possibly can. We are not at a complete stand-still point but a lot of what we do at this point in our project is merely manual labor, as books continue to come in and need placing and storing.

Work Completed:
We had a successful time with our presentation and kickoff for our project. Everyone seemed to enjoy the pizza party, powerpoint presentation, younger visitors, and room decoration as much as we hoped they would. We were able to gather some good suggestions from our classmates, many of which we have already implemented. One classmate even recommended us to her sorority president, so that we might put a word in with her service sorority and get extended help. Our flyer has been copied, approved by officials at Hendrix, and hung around campus for all to see. We wrapped our collection box in tissue paper and placed it outside of the 1941 Communications Studio in Daniel Hall. We wrote a press release, which we gave to Professor Holmevik to send out to other faculty members.

Next Steps:
We would like to send a campus-wide email out on the school server, but we are not sure if this will happen or not. We are in the process of doing some research and seeing how doable it actually is. We want to continue collecting books on our own, outside of just gathering what comes about in our box located outside of the 1941 Communications Studio. We have found various locations that have additional books to give away for free, so we’re keeping our ears and eyes open for that. Our most important “next step” is our paper. We recently learned that the paper is supposed to be anywhere between twenty and thirty pages, which scares us, honestly. We have an idea of what we are supposed to include in the paper, and we know what we have already included in the paper thus far, but we are not sure that we can meet the minimum length requirement. Even with visuals included, which we do not want to overload the paper with, meeting the minimum length requirement is going to be our biggest obstacle of all. We tried to meet with Professor Holmevik about it today, but he was not in his office, so we will schedule another time to get his input.

Conclusion:
Sharon and I are so satisfied with the support we have received thus far in the book collection. Of course we set our hopes high, but we are actually achieving what we set out to accomplish from the start. I think the reality of the situation really started to hit us when we saw our first twenty books come in. The Clemson community, and surrounding areas, are so eager to get rid of books, especially during this time of year, so I think we hit the nail on the head when we decided to do a public relations campaign for our project. We have each learned a great deal about public relations and the fundamentals of making a campaign a success, so we will exercise what we learn through this small book collection in our real-world jobs and internships in the future. For now, though, we must focus on the books for the kindergarten through twelfth graders!