Week one at Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin

$1 = 5 meals. That's what hooked me to this organization last summer as an intern for Diversey, Inc. (formerly Johnson Diversey). As a commercialization intern at Diversey during the summer months, my fellow interns and I put a tremendous amount of work in to a fundraiser for Feeding America. On top of the work we each had for our own departments a handful of us took leadership roles on the fundraising efforts, including myself. We visited Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin (FAEW) offices at the beginning of summer and we volunteered Wednesday evenings at a Kid's Cafe in Racine, about 15 minutes from our offices. By the end of summer we had developed a relationship with these children so we organized a health fair for them and provided backpacks filled with basic essentials that most people might take for granted. When all was said and done on August 17th, we presented Erica and Sue from FAEW with a check for $10,000. Which in turn would create 50,000 nutritious, well balanced meals for those in need. Needless to say, I wanted to see what more I could do so I contacted Ericka mid-December about internship opportunities.

My first day was January 10th. From the get-go I knew I was going to enjoy my time spent here. Having worked at a corporation of roughly 300 employees to a non-profit organization of about 35 employees, this was definitely going to be an adjustment. Every one here is like family, we work in open cubicles where it's easy to talk with others when you're lost on an assignment and FAEW's president and CEO, Bonnie Bellehumeur's office is down the hall from cube. Similarly to Diversey, FAEW prides itself on its open lines of communication among employees, management and upper-level management.

The first week I worked 33 hours, under three different supervisors. Terri Torbeck, HR manager, had me do some behind the scenes work for the company like organizing employee time cards and entering donations in to Raiser's Edge. Sue Zoladiewicz, who I had met through Diversey, is the Resource Development manager in charge of fundraising. I helped her work on contacts for the annual Pound for Pound Challenge that is sponsored by NBC's "Biggest Loser". {http://pfpchallenge.com/ }Originally Sue had a general information letter that she sent out to all the Curves location throughout Eastern Wisconsin. I took a look at the letter, edited it and then as she spoke to me about the disappointing response she had received from the letter I suggest creating a fact sheet instead. This way companies could easily read the information about PFP challenge and FAEW without getting lost in a wordy letter. Sue absolutely loved the idea and once I produced the fact sheet for her, she was thrilled and confident that this would help with the awareness FAEW would like for the challenge.

Gina Styer, communications manager, is who I work most closely with aside from Sue. Gina gave me a job to find all of the tax firms (H&R Block, Liberty Tax..etc) and public libraries throughout the 37 counties we services and develop a contact spreadsheet for them. It took me about a day and half to find all of the companies I thought would benefit FAEW, but Gina was impressed that I completed the task as quickly and thoroughly as I had. She then asked me to develop letters that we would send out to these contacts making them aware of the donation option on WI state tax forms (line 38i) where tax payers can choose to donate a dollar or more to Feeding America.{http://feedingamericawi.org/news/help-hungry-while-doing-your-taxes-0}  Last year was the first year Feeding America had this option available on the tax firm and without any advertising $90,000 were donated. The goal this year is to reach more companies and increase the amount donated with the help of advertisements, media pitches and news coverage - this is what I will be working on for the next few weeks as well as the pound for pound challenge.

I'm very excited about this internship and how many people we can help through our efforts. Maybe non-profit is the path I will choose after graduation in May. :o)