The San Francisco Trip!

Finally, the day came for the big culmination of my internship: the trip to United Way of the Bay Area’s San Francisco Office! My manager, Rachel, and I left San Luis Obispo around 7:30 am to begin the drive up. Our meeting was scheduled at 1:30 pm, so with a stop for lunch we got there just in time!

When we got there we met up with Kelly, the Program Coordinator of UW Bay Area. She started by giving us an office tour, and I was immediately struck by the stark differences between the Bay Area Office and the UW SLO office. It is much larger, with far more workers; it is on the 10^th floor of a 15-floor building; the office members seem to interact in small quiet groups within their own areas, rather than interacting across the office as we do in SLO. These differences seem expected and obvious for an office so much larger, yet I still found myself surprised that this was a United Way, just like San Luis Obispo’s. With only 6 office members, the San Luis Obispo office is tiny and in the basement of a 1 story building. It amazed me how simply being in a large city versus a small town can change not just how the office feels but also how the people within the office interact with one another. My first impressions were excited because I could already see the variations and possibilities within this one nonprofit: now put that on the larger scale of all nonprofits, and the possibilities seem endless. It made me feel like there is probably a nonprofit that could fit every part of what I see myself doing, from where I want to work to how I want to interact within my job.

Next up for our visit Rachel and I were scheduled to meet with Kelly so I could interview her, followed by a meeting with three Program Leaders for me to interview as well, and finally another meeting with Kelly so that Rachel could ask a few questions herself.

Ahead of time, I constructed a loose outline for the questions I wanted to ask the interviewees. I tried to think of questions that would help answer questions I have myself: what should I major in? What would it really be like to work full time in a nonprofit like United Way? The questions I created to ask all my interviewees were:

1) What did you major in in college? Did you expect to end up working in a place such as United Way when you majored in _________?

2) What led you to working at United Way?

3) What does your position at United Way entail? How did it vary from or stick to your expectations when you started here?

4) Describe a “day in the life” as a (Interviewed Person’s Title) here at United Way.

5) What is your favorite thing about working for United Way/ working for a non-profit?

6) If you could change anything about your job what would it be and why?

7) How can you see United Way changing as an organization in the next 10 years/ long term?

8) Do you have any advice for someone like myself, an underclassmen in college interested in pursuing a major in/ pertaining to human rights?

Then, I also came up with a few program-specific questions for each of the Program Leaders individually:

2-Gen Approach

What specific actions does UW Bay Area take to provide for both generations in a family? How does UW Bay Area stay focused in such an all-encompassing approach model? What statistics or other indications show how this approach has been effective?

MatchBridge

How does it work? Are the jobs that students are matched to with companies that United Way Bay Area has direct relationships with, or is it more of a system to efficiently find pre-existing job listings that youth may be unable to find themselves? How did the program start and how has it grown? Do you think this program can work on a smaller scale in a United Way like San Luis Obispo’s, or is it more of a big city project?

Realistically with the limited amount of time Rachel and I had, I did not ask every interviewee all the questions, but I got an immense amount of information and answers that I am so grateful for.

Once all the interviews were over, I felt so grateful to have had the opportunity to travel to San Francisco and meet these inspiring and driven people. I genuinely left feeling a lot more confidence about my future, and an ever-increasing interest in eventually ending up in a place like United Way. I cannot thanks the Mgrublian Human Rights Center enough for providing me with the funds to make this trip happen!

I plan to include a detailed summary of the interviews I held in my final reflection paper.

Me with Rachel, Larry, Katherine, and Kelly at the UW Bay Area Office

A few pictures from the last month at United Way

Here is a photo from my co-worker Carrie's last-day lunch.

And here are a few more designs that I have gotten to create for the website and other marketing outlets:

Finalizing the Details for Bay Area Visit!

Because of the funding I received from the Mgrublian Human Rights Center at CMC, I am getting the opportunity to visit another United Way office. I am going to San Francisco to visit one of the three UW offices located in the Bay Area. I expect that it will be pretty incredible to see how big United Way can be: the SLO office has only 6-7 employees whereas bigger cities can have hundreds! I have an appointment to interview quite a few people there, and it's just so exciting to see it all coming together. Rachel (my supervisor) and I just booked the hotel a week or so ago right in downtown San Francisco. We are planning to leave on August 9th early in the morning because we have a few appointments later that day. Now I just have to write up the interview questions!

Reflecting on the First Weeks

Now a few weeks in, I feel that I have started to blend into my office better. I like the way it is set up, as in the desks are all in one main area so everything feels very open. There are a few individual cubicles but doors are always open. It is small enough that questions and conversations are exchanged without leaving our desks. I go to weekly team meetings, and though a lot of the topics my coworkers go over are still very foreign to me I do understand more and more that is said each week. When I first arrived, things were a little squished in office because I was overlapping with a few interns that were about to head home for the summer. Last week, an intern had her last day. It was really nice to see how much the office appreciated her, and we had a going away lunch where she was presented with a plaque for her work. The general attitude of the office is so friendly and I really am enjoying it.

Here are most of my coworkers, and Courtney is the intern who finished
shortly after I arrived. Nikia is on the far left, then Carrie, Rachel,
 Courtney, myself, and Leslie.

I have been getting more acquainted with what my position hopes to accomplish as well. Basically, United Way of SLO is an avid survey-taking and data collecting nonprofit. Nearly every project that they have completed or continue to complete annually has multiple surveys, quotes from participants, numbers and figures and much more that gives an indication for that program's success level. Given this data, I have been analyzing it from a marketing standpoint to find trends that would be most compelling to share to future participants, or perhaps figures that would compel an individual to donate to United Way. With the data I organize, I have been making flyers and brochures that are informative and persuasive. I love the design aspect- and simultaneously analytic side- of my work so far. Additionally, once I have gone through all existing data, I have been asked to collect new data and continue the process of making sense of that data.
Here are a few examples of flyers I have created:

I created this for our resource hotline, 211.

This one was created for the UW
Instagram page, which I started.
@unitedwayslo

I created this one for an education outreach program we have.

So, that's all for my update! I can definitely say that things are going great :)

The First Day

The first day of my internship for United Way was on May 26, 2016. While I really had no idea what to expect, I also have worked before with United Way, in high school, so I was instantly welcomed by many familiar faces. What I found most immediately surprising was how fast the time was going throughout the day; I suppose that after years of movie-theater-jobs, I had begun to associate "work" with "slow and boring." Even on my first day where I was just getting settled in, I left feeling like I could have stayed longer, working on my project for the day much more. The first day I was introduced to the computer system, given a small office tour, shown to my desk, and acquainted with more specifically what I would be doing. Since my first day, I have been put in charge of most of United Way SLO's publicity. I have written and published Facebook and Twitter posts. I have written and submitted press releases for the United Way Youth Board (which is pretty neat since the Youth Board is how I first came into contact with United Way). I have compiled surveys from the Youth Board and United Way's Imagination Library, and turned the data into informative flyers for publicity. I have created brochures. All this in the first week, and I haven't been bored once. I am very excited to see where the summer takes me. :)

Here is a picture I took of my desk!