14/3/16 - Researching

Before my two-week, full-time, placement began today, I spent a little time researching the type of work I will be doing for Changing Lives.

I have been asked to create, or assist in creating, an impact report for the charity with an accompanying infographic. These are vital in creating new, and strengthening existing, relationships with stakeholders and are also effective in showing the public that the charity is doing its job: helping people. This kind of work will rely on my existing design and writing skills to represent the company accurately, professionally, and in a way that inspires interest. 

Initially, I looked into already-existing impact reports from organisations in the same sector as Changing Lives, such as Shelter, Crisis, and Barnardo's. As established, national organisations with a well-structured Communications and PR team, I felt these companies would be good sources of inspiration to help with my initial ideas for the project.

One of the impact reports that stood out most as an effective layout and design to imitate in my own project was Barnardo's impact report for 2014-15. The simple, three-column design is easy to follow and nicely broken up by infographics, graphs, and case studies. The structure of each section article also stood out to me: giving an overview of the theme, then detailing the companies aim in this sector, its work in this sector and finally its impact in this particular sector of their organisation (including relevant facts and stats).  See below.

Barnardo's Impact Report 2014-15 http://www.barnardos.org.uk/impact-report-2015.pdf

On my first day in Changing Lives' central office, I began by going through the monthly reports collated by the HR team, detailing key statistics for each programme the charity works with. These spreadsheets included the number of clients using these services each month, the number of volunteers helping the  charity manage these services, as well as financial turnover for each sector each month. To extract the information I needed for my impact report (for the current financial year), I had to liaise with various sectors of the charity via email to fact-check the statistics, and fill in any gaps that I required, before then using Microsoft Excel to formulate statistics which I can now use in the next two weeks to create eye-catching, appealing infographics. 

Once I had created a foundation of statistics to base my report on, I used the company website, social media profiles, and pre-existing publicity (such as leaflets and brochures) to help me formulate an idea of what each section aims to do each year and how they aim to achieve their specific targets. I then used this information to create new articles detailing the Accommodation, Addiction and Recovery, Employment, and Women's Services sections. These articles will be used to inform any reader of the impact report on the section and provide an overview of what each section has achieved in the past year. I will then lay these out alongside accompanying infographics, case studies and images in an attractive way to ensure the impact report is professional-looking. 

Some of the sectors that Changing Lives manages had little information on the charity's website and social media profiles, particularly the sectors that are new additions. These include the FareShare project and the Homelife group. To remedy this and to ensure my impact report is fully informed for its purpose of accompanying grant applications and letting stakeholders know of the charity's progress, I have arranged to chat to the relevant employees in the next few days to gather all my information, ready for next week, in which I plan to do the majority of the laying up on Adobe InDesign. 

I discussed my ideas with my liaising officer, Rhiannon Bearne, at the end of today, and showed her my progress. I was encouraged to find how pleased she was with the work I had completed today, and hope to continue my pace of work tomorrow so I am in a position to begin designing infographics using Photoshop on Wednesday and Thursday. I also have the opportunity to accompany the Outreach team on their early morning walks of the city centre in which they check up on rough sleepers and let them know about the services Changing Lives offers in their day centres. I feel that this experience, although not directly related to my PR & Communications project, will be invaluable in adding a reality and humanity to the statistics I am currently working with.

During my first day, I feel I have learnt a lot more about Changing Lives which secures it in my mind as part of the Creative Industries sector. Although the company is predominantly a charity organisation at its core, the Communications team I am working with are very much focused on the same targets and tasks as required in a cultural industry. For example, the production of leaflets, social media posts, blog posts, and webpages are part of the day-to-day running of the Comms team. Their role in representing the charity in the media and public eye is a vital source of revenue and interest which impacts on all of the other sections of the charity, such as the Grants team and the HR team.