8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m –\u00a0<\/strong>As I do two or three times a week, I picked up a skim mocha on my way in to work. Although I live in a different state than I work, my commute is only about 10 minutes, across the Mississippi River bridge.<\/p>\nI am the Marketing\/Development Director at a children’s museum, a position I have held for 19 years, since before the museum opened. As one of only three full-time employees, my job has a lot of variety, including helping to answer phones, scheduling field trips, answering questions about memberships and birthday parties, assisting desk staff as needed, and other things not specific to development or marketing.<\/p>\n
When I arrive at the museum around 8:00, I check my folder at our admissions desk and often find notes from desk staff about data updates\/corrections for members since I maintain our database.<\/p>\n
Once at my desk, I check email and respond to anything time-sensitive.<\/p>\n
I also check Facebook to do a quick scan for any activity on the museum’s page that requires action. I follow lots of industry and family related Facebook pages, so if I see something that may be of interest to our followers, I may share it or save it for a future post. I use Buffer to schedule a daily Facebook, Twitter and Google+ post ahead of time, so I don’t always do another daily post.<\/p>\n
I am a list-maker, so I take a look at my to-do list (hand-written on a piece of actual paper) and mentally prioritize my main tasks for the day.<\/p>\n
When the mail arrives, I go through it first, distributing to appropriate staff and processing membership renewals and donations in our database.<\/p>\n
I generate a report for our bookkeeper and print gift acknowledgment letters and envelopes, which I pass on to our Executive Director for signature and deposit.<\/p>\n
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. –<\/strong>\u00a0Today, I had a 10:00 to 11:15 meeting with one of the co-chairs for a $2 million capital campaign we have recently initiated, our first major campaign since the one we did to open the Museum 19-20 years ago. We are working with a consultant just on the planning and volunteer management for the campaign. With input from her, our E.D. and committee volunteers, I created the case statement and other related materials. We are now in the quiet solicitation stage and planning an ask event for late March.<\/p>\nBalancing the added workload of this campaign with all the other day-to-day work tasks is challenging, so I’m trying to delegate some of my tasks to a part-time employee who is interested in taking on more administrative responsibilities. I’m one of those people who would rather do things myself than delegate, but I know I have to free up time for the campaign.<\/p>\n
12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. –\u00a0<\/strong>Lunch, leftovers brought from home, something picked up from the food co-op down the street or a Clif bar and Diet Coke, is usually eaten at my desk while I check Facebook and email again, reading blog and list serve posts that I subscribe to.<\/p>\nAfter lunch, I usually get back to my to-do list, which currently includes, but is not limited to: write and mail hand-written thank you notes to donors from last couple weeks, email news release about upcoming Super Hero Breakfast event, email draft ask event invitation to campaign communications committee for input and work on guest list, create and post\/send Facebook and email request for photos and stories about family’s museum stories for potential sharing with campaign prospects, work on grant applications for local foundations, submit end of year reports for last year’s grants…the list goes on.<\/p>\n
2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. –\u00a0<\/strong>Our two campaign committees meet at 4:00 and 5:15 every other week, so late afternoons involve preparing for these meetings and working on and adding to the to-do list.<\/p>\nAfter 4:00 p.m. –\u00a0<\/strong>I usually leave my office around 5:30 and head home to make dinner and clean the kitchen, do some laundry, interact with my family and other home “stuff”. I usually check my email and Facebook at least once and deal with anything that shouldn’t wait until the next day.<\/p>\nThen I unwind by doing some coloring and\/or reading a few chapters of an e-book (fiction) and falling asleep around 11:00 with firm plans to get up on time and exercise in the morning.<\/p>\n
Thanks for sharing your day, Leanne!<\/em><\/p>\nWant to be featured in this series?\u00a0<\/strong>Tell us what you do in a\u00a0typical day as a nonprofit communications pro<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s the latest installment in our series on the\u00a0\u201cDay in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[460,470],"class_list":["post-3234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nonprofit-marketing-career","tag-npcommlife","tag-day-in-the-life"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Day in the Life of a Nonprofit Communicator - Leanne Poellinger - Nonprofit Marketing Guide (NPMG)<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n