Throughout my time at Save the Rhino I have had many opportunities to do a mixture of tasks to get a feel for everything that goes into charity work, with a particular focus on corporate relationships. However, working a 2 month period I have managed to “showcase” my skills and have been allocated a final task: data mining.
As a biologist we work strongly in statistics and with writing a personal blog, I find data mining very interesting. For those of you who don’t know: this is the act of searching a customer base to give a profile to a typical customer so that they can be targeted effectively. I was given access to the behind the scenes of all social media and Save the Rhino’s website to get an idea of the kind of supporters and traffic we attract.
I found it absolutely fascinating and terrifying the amount of information we seemed to know about our audience just through likes, favourites, and clicks. It is really interesting to not only know what kind of people we are attracting but also how web platforms are used. At Save the Rhino social media platforms are used by a completely different audience for a completely different reason to the website.
It is a great and final insight into the work of charities. This however is a universal skill that I can carry on to many different kinds of work and I’m glad I was given an opportunity to practice it in my final days.
When first arriving at Imperial College, thinking I had the next 5 years of my life planned, I never once considered working for a charity despite the number of times I had volunteered for one. However this was a different kind of volunteer experience to the rest, I think much of volunteering can be superficial as you’re only there for a few days a week and only for the time period of a couple of months. This experience definitely cannot be described as superficial, I was taught the ins and outs and I am very grateful for it. Perhaps charity work is appearing more on my horizon than I thought.
