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    Tell Your Story in the Local Media: Write about Your Rotary Partners to Celebrate Volunteer Work
    Tell Your Story in the Local Media: Write about Your Rotary Partners to Celebrate Volunteer Work
    Tell Your Story in the Local Media: Write about Your Rotary Partners to Celebrate Volunteer Work
    Ebook70 pages57 minutes

    Tell Your Story in the Local Media: Write about Your Rotary Partners to Celebrate Volunteer Work

    By Quentin Wodon

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    About this ebook

    As is the case for many nonprofits, the success of Rotary clubs depends in part on the image that communities have of the organization. Public image – the term often used in Rotary – matters especially for membership, both to attract new members and to keep the members clubs already have. But it also matters for the ability of Rotary to implement service projects in local communities and internationally. Finally, it matters for fundraising for charitable purposes in order to fund the projects that clubs undertake.
    Relationships with the local media, and the way clubs are covered in the local media, are a major factor affecting a club’s public image. This book shares lessons from my experience on behalf of my club in improving the club’s public image by publishing articles in the local traditional media. The hope is that the lessons learned – and the examples of articles written, will be useful to other service clubs as well as other nonprofits that may consider similar endeavors.
    The premise of this book is that service clubs should aim to strengthen their public image. This premise is informed not only by my own experience as a Rotarian, but also by data that collected for my district through a membership survey on what Rotarians perceive is working well in their club, and what is not working so well. Essentially, Rotarians rated the performance of their clubs in terms of engagement with the local media at the bottom of the scale in comparison to their perception of their club’s performance in other areas.
    Until recently, my own club’s engagement with the local media was not much better. We were not well known in the community and had virtually no contacts with the local media. As our membership was declining, we had to make a change in this area as well as in many others. With the aim of increasing our membership after years of decline, we adopted a strategic plan and pilot program for a period of six months. One of the plan’s dimensions was a stronger engagement with the local community including through the local media.
    First, we used club meetings to invite leaders from local nonprofits to tell us their own story. Second, we decided to participate in more community events. Third, we started to organize more public events ourselves. Fourth, and this is what this book is about, we started to write stories for local media outlets, both traditional and social.
    The basic idea for this new endeavor was that instead of writing articles about our club, we should write about the great work that local nonprofits, many of which we support in our service work, do in the community. More specifically, we should write about the opportunity for residents of the community to volunteer for great nonprofits and thereby make a difference in the community.
    There were four reasons for this choice of topic. First, writing about other nonprofits instead of our club would provide an opportunity to write more articles, and thereby establish a stronger media presence in the community. Second, by documenting the work of local nonprofits and the volunteering opportunities they provide, we would help these nonprofits gain in visibility, which would then almost be a worthwhile service activity in itself for our club. Third, these articles could help our club solidify collaborations with some of the local nonprofits featured in the articles, or open doors for new collaborations. Fourth, by writing stories about nonprofits in action (and mentioning occasionally the role of Rotarians in helping them), we would build an image of our club as an action-oriented agent for positive change in the community.
    The first chapter of the book explains what we did and why. The second chapter provides the set of articles that were written for local traditional media outlets at the time of publishing this book. A brief conclusion follows with some key lessons learned.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherQuentin Wodon
    Release dateMar 12, 2017
    ISBN9781946819055
    Tell Your Story in the Local Media: Write about Your Rotary Partners to Celebrate Volunteer Work
    Author

    Quentin Wodon

    Quentin Wodon is a Lead Economist in the Education Global Practice at the World Bank where he leads work programs among others on equity and inclusion in education, child marriage, out-of-school children, and the wealth of nations. Previously, he managed the World Bank unit on values and development, served as Lead Poverty Specialist for West and Central Africa, and as Economist/Senior Economist in the Latin America region. Before joining the World Bank, he worked among others as Assistant Brand Manager with Procter & Gamble, volunteer corps member with the International Movement ATD Fourth World, and (tenured) Assistant Professor of Economics with the University of Namur. He has also taught at American University and Georgetown University. A lifelong learner, he holds graduate degrees in Business Engineering, Economics, and Philosophy, as well as PhDs in Economics, Environmental Science, Health Sciences, and Theology and Religious Studies. Quentin has more than 500 publications on a wide range of topics. Books published since 2014 include Water and Sanitation in Uganda (World Bank), The Economics of Faith-based Service Delivery (Palgrave Macmillan), Climate Change Adaptation and Social Resilience in the Sundarbans (Routledge), Investing in Early Childhood Development (World Bank), Infrastructure and Poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave Macmillan), Education in sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank), Faith-Based Schools in Latin America (World Bank), Climate Change and Migration (World Bank), and Membership in Service Clubs (Palgrave Macmillan). A recipient of the Prize of Belgium’s Secretary of Foreign Trade, a Fulbright grant, and the Dudley Seers Prize, Quentin has served on several advisory boards for non-profit organizations and university programs, and as Associate Editor for academic journals. A past President of the Society of Government Economists, he is currently serving as President of the Association for Social Economics. Quentin is actively involved in Rotary with his club (currently serving as President), District (former Evaluation Adviser and Interact Chair, among others), and Rotary International (committee member for the Rotary Foundation and other roles). His father was a Rotarian. His daughters founded the Interact Club of their High School. Quentin launched the Rotarian Economist blog in 2014 on World Polio Day and the Rotarian Economist Short Books series in 2017.

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      Book preview

      Tell Your Story in the Local Media - Quentin Wodon

      Tell Your Story in the Local Media

      Write about Your Rotary Partners to Celebrate Volunteer Work

      By Quentin Wodon

      Copyright 2017 Quentin Wodon

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book is available for free through Smashwords but it remains the copyrighted property of the authors, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends, colleagues, or students to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer or at Smashwords. Thank you for your support.

      *

      Table of Contents

      Foreword to the Series

      Introduction

      Chapter 1: Writing for the Local Traditional Media

      Chapter 2: Articles Published in the Local Traditional Media

      1-Volunteering on the Hill: One World Education

      2-Volunteering on the Hill: Tutoring

      3-Volunteering on the Hill: Reaching Out to the Homeless

      4-Volunteering on the Hill: Teaching Financial Literacy

      5-Volunteering on the Hill: Celebrating a Diversity of Volunteering Options

      6-Volunteering on the Hill: Preserving the Historic Beauty of Capitol Hill

      7-Volunteering on the Hill: Opportunities for the New Year

      8-Volunteering on the Hill: Chiarina Brings Music to Life

      9-Volunteering on the Hill: Volunteer Capitol Hill 2017 on April 29

      10-Volunteering in Capitol Hill

      11-Writing Program Helps Give Students a Voice

      12-With Winter’s Arrival, Time to Aid Homeless

      Conclusion

      References

      About the Author

      Connect with the Author

      FOREWORD to the series

      This ebook is published as part of the Rotarian Economist Short Books series. The books in the series are short, typically at 15,000 words or less. They provide rapid and practical introductions to topics related to volunteer work, service clubs, nonprofits, and the six areas of focus of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. These areas of focus are promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water, saving mothers and children, supporting education, and growing local economies. Other topics will be considered as well.

      The book series is associated with the Rotarian Economist Blog launched in October 2014 on World Polio Day. The aim of the blog and its book series is to provide analysis that can help readers make a positive difference in the life of the less fortunate. If you would like to receive email alerts of new posts and resources made available on the blog, please provide your email through the widget at https://rotarianeconomist.com/.

      The editor and main author for the book series works at the World Bank. Although some of the books in the series may relate to topics that the author and co-author(s) may occasionally work on at the World Bank, the opinions expressed in the books are solely those of the individual author(s) of each book in the series and do not represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. This book series is not associated in any formal or informal way with the World Bank.

      If you would like to contact the author(s) of books in the series for a question or to provide feedback, please do not hesitate to send an email to the editor of the series through the Contact Me page of the Rotarian Economist blog.

      INTRODUCTION

      As is the case for many nonprofits, the success of Rotary clubs and Rotary International depends in part on the image that communities have of the organization. Public image – the term often used in Rotary – matters especially for membership, both to attract new members and to keep the members clubs already have. But it also matters for the ability of Rotary to implement service projects in local communities and internationally. Finally, it matters for fundraising for charitable purposes in order to fund the projects that clubs undertake.

      Relationships with the local media, and the way clubs are covered in the local media, are a major factor affecting a club’s public image. This book shares lessons from my experience on behalf of my club in improving the club’s public image by publishing articles in the local traditional media. The hope is that the lessons learned – and the examples of articles written, will be useful to other service clubs as well as other nonprofits that may consider similar endeavors.

      In order to set the broader context for the initiative described in this book, while Rotary has a very rich centennial history (Forward, 2003, 2016), it seems fair to say that the organization’s public image is not as good as it could be, at least in the West. Service clubs have had their critics for some time. In 1922, Sinclair Lewis, a Nobel laureate for literature, wrote the novel Babbitt, a satire of middle class American culture, including service clubs. Today, the image of Rotary clubs remains to some

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