Charity Insights

My last week at WildHearts was very much a case of pulling together the work of the past month and making sure that I had left no loose ends.

I was successful in contacting the schools that were signed up for the conference and collecting in the attendee names of the schools that confirmed attendance. With the numbers confirmed, school delegates will make roughly a quarter of the event’s expected attendance of around 280. There were a number of schools that were unable to take up their places for various reasons – therefore it is very pleasing that we managed to maintain a healthy proportion of school delegates.

Additionally I completed the task of acquiring videos and slides from the event speakers. The collected media will be compiled into a single presentation in order to maintain the flow of the event by removing the need to launch each individual presentation between speakers.

I also dealt with some more general logistic tasks for the Edinburgh GEL that included notifying delegates of their allocated parking spaces and preparing the name badges after they were printed.

The research that I had been conducting around models of ambassador networks and methods of increasing campus presence was also finalised and submitted. Hopefully this work will prove useful down the line for WildHearts and their operations.

These past four weeks really have been a fantastic experience, I’ve learned a great deal about the power of social enterprise and the terrific work that WildHearts and it’s people do every day. I have also had the invaluable chance to put my skills to use in a meaningful way and am really looking forward to attending the London GEL and hopefully seeing how my work has contributed towards making it a successful event. For anyone in future years considering undergoing an insights placement I would just say go for it, you won’t regret it.

Read Wrapping Up in full

A big part of this week was consolidating attendance at the Edinburgh GEL summit. The invitations that I distributed last week resulted in a great number of responses and new signups for the event. Although the initial period after sending my invitations was fairly quiet, in the end the effort did pay off.

With the Edinburgh GEL fast approaching the volume of emails coming in is increasing and there are always event bookings to be taken and parking/dinner reservations to be made. This has highlighted the importance of multi-tasking, as I have been required to deal with these requests in parallel with my other set tasks.

I was also required to contact a number of schools from around Scotland that are attending the event in order to obtain the names of the attending school representatives. This proved less straightforward than anticipated due to the different school term start dates for each local authority. By the end of the week I had managed to collect in about half of the required information with the rest due to be obtained in week four.

Another task for this week was to liaise with the event speakers for the Edinburgh and the London GELs in order to obtain their presentation slides and handle any of their other requirements. The slides were needed in order to prepare a composite presentation for the event day and have time to test the master presentation with the venue facilities. This again was a task that will run onto week four but there was some good progress made this week.

On a slightly different note, this week I was given a couple of new research based tasks. Firstly I have been looking into various student membership organisations, focusing on their on campus activities and the number of students they can reach, in order to find new ways of promoting next year’s Micro Tyco Student Challenge. The second research task is to look into the brand ambassador schemes of various organisations in order to provide some insight on how these schemes are run. This is in support of WildHearts’ plans to launch an ambassador scheme in the future to allow industry experts to contribute their network and image towards the WildHearts cause.

So that’s that for this week, I am looking forward to completing my tasks next week so stay tuned for updates!

Read Week Three at WildHearts in full

The focus of this week was to put my research from last week into good use and start acquiring new guests for the Edinburgh Global Entrepreneurial Leaders (GEL) summit.

Given that the GEL is a unique educational experience, it is very relevant to school pupils and educators. WildHearts have a great deal of experience in working with schools through their Micro-Tyco for schools programme and the GEL is the perfect platform for maintain engagement with schools post Micro-Tyco. On this front, my task was to sort through past Micro-Tyco records and compile them into a single database, this made it simple to see which schools have taken part in the competition over the years and in turn the school representatives to invite. For some cases the details were not complete and research had to be conducted through school handbooks and local authority websites.

Once I had a list of potential attendees I drafted a number of invitation emails. These invitations were tailored to organisation type and separate versions of the invitation were produced for high schools, primary schools and commercial businesses. I sent these drafts to my supervisor and after some feedback and editorial changes the invitations were ready to send out.

The invitations were distributed by email via the use of a mail merge, a function of Microsoft Office that allows you to create and send multiple copies of an email with minor changes in each copy such as recipient name and email address. After distributing the invitation it was not long before I started getting responses.

Further tasks for this week included reaching out to schools already signed up for the summit, gathering the names of the representatives that will be attending from each specific school, offering additional places to schools with increased demand and looking into various Boston based companies as part of my research for the Boston GEL. I also proof read and made suggestions for the GEL brochure which will be distributed on the event days.

At the halfway-point of my internship I feel that I have learnt a great deal and managed to make some worthwhile contributions to the organisation. I am confident that the second half of this placement will be just as valuable and I look forward to working on a new range of tasks.

Read WildHearts – The Second Week in full

The main focus of my first week at WildHearts was to generate leads for the Edinburgh Global Entrepreneurial Leaders (GEL) summit. In order to find viable leads I was required to compile a list of organisations that would benefit from attending the GEL. During my research, it was important to keep in mind the GEL’s objective – to promote the use of business as a force for positive change. This provided a profile for the target attendees in that they aught to be current and future change-makers.

To this end I produced a database of over one hundred Scotland-based organisations that included schools, businesses and networking groups. The businesses that appear on the list are very influential and are regulars in rankings of profitability. Once the organisations were identified I moved on to researching the relevant individuals to invite.

For businesses, the focus was on those individuals involved with either human resources or procurement as these people have respectively the ability to influence talent development and to consider social value when sourcing services/products. One of the main tools that I used for this research was LinkedIn and, given the popularity of the platform, it was a valuable lesson in people research. The results from my LinkedIn research provided me with names of the relevant departmental contact and from this point the objective was to find the contact details for each now-known individual. For most of the businesses, the contact phone number would simply be the head office phone number. Through the course of my research I developed a routine that I used to find email addresses for these individuals as this information did not tend to be trivially obtainable.

In the case of schools, contact details proved to be more readily available. The individual that I researched tended to be the head teacher and contact details for the school were be obtained through the Scottish education website. One of the big motivations for inviting schools is there is the opportunity for them to learn more about the Micro-Tyco challenge and this may encourage them to enrol their schools into the programme. This is key for inspiring the next generation of socially responsibly entrepreneurs.

Aside from my main task, I have also been assisting with the preparation of WildHearts promotional material, conducting wider general research (examining the philanthropic efforts of every firm on “The Sunday Times’ 100 Best Companies To Work For 2015”) and helping to manage the logistics of the three GEL summits (answering email queries and signing people up).

All in all, the week has taught me a great deal and I feel confident that the leads that I have found will convert to attendees at the GEL – roll on week two!

Read Reflecting on Week One at WildHearts in full

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my charity insights placement with WildHearts. For the next four weeks I will be based in their Glasgow office working on many different and exciting projects. You can follow my progress exclusively and free of charge on this blog!

WildHearts is a charity built on the ethos of promoting and enabling the practice of ethical and sustainable business. The organisation runs a wide selection of enterprises, all centred around these common values.

One of these enterprises is the Micro Tyco challenge, which I took part in last year with my team Quintessential. This is an entrepreneurial competition targeted at schools, universities and businesses in which the objective is to put your business ideas into practice and raise as much money as possible over a month. The money collected by all of the competing teams is used to provide financial support (in the form of micro loans) to people around the world in order to enable them to develop their own businesses and escape the crippling poverty in which they are trapped. The message of the challenge is the to embrace the potential and importance of channelling business as a force for good.

Another important scheme that WildHearts run is the series of Global Entrepreneurial Leaders (GEL) summits – three events scheduled each year in Edinburgh, London and Boston. These summits deliver the message of sustainable businesses through the experience of a range of prominent speakers from highly recognisable businesses such as RBS and Deloitte, as well from social enterprises such as The Big Issue and the Homeless World Cup. The events are targeted at future business leaders and provide a chance to discuss and network with people from a wide range of industries.

These are just two examples of WildHearts’ many initiatives that I will be getting involved with over the course of my internship, so make sure to keep up with these posts!

If you would like to find out more about WildHearts and their activities, their website can be reached at:

http://wildheartsinaction.org.

Read Introduction to WildHearts in full