Following on from yesterday's research, I spent the first half of today finishing my research into the company's main facts and figures for the current financial year 2015/16. This research included communicating with the overseeing manager of Changing Lives' Fareshare scheme: a food redistribution service that caters for schools, community centres, and food banks. As the person in question was not in the office today, and spends much of the working week out of the office on projects, I contacted him via email detailing the work I am doing for Changing Lives for the next few weeks and then requesting some information from his resources to help with my project.
With the main bulk of my statistical research completed, I then turned to creating an engaging and informative text document to accompany the info-graphics I will be creating. This required reading a lot of pre-existing literature produced from the charity, picking out the key points, and then formulating my own document to express these points in layman terms. I found that my experience in my English Literature degree was invaluable in this task, and helped me process a lot of dense information quickly.
Some of this information included Changing Lives' five-year plan: their 2020 vision. A 46-page document, the 2020 vision details the charity's targets, aspirations, and plans to achieve the vision. After reading it through a few times at home in preparation for my work placement (as I was presented with this literature during my induction session on the 9th March), I felt confident in scanning the document and extracting the key information. This key information, I found, included : the charity's main priorities over the next five years, such as their aspirations to increase media interest in their work and increase their online profile; targets for increasing the team of paid staff and volunteers making all the work possible, and funding options to make this growth possible; and the problems the charity, individually and as part of the charity sector in general, face in the next five years owing to likely government cuts etc.
During this process I found a piece of information which I believe is quintessential for my project. At the moment, the charity only has a 25% success rate in its bid applications, totalling 14 successful applications out of a total 56 for this year. I believe that a professionally-produced Impact Report will be highly beneficial in future bid applications as it will provide an overview of what the charity has achieved already and also provide an indicator of what the charity is capable of through the right funding and so on.
In the afternoon I began to focus on the design of the Impact Report in preparation for my starting to lay it all up tomorrow. I began by using the Communications team's existing resources - images, case studies, leaflet templates etc - and pooled a collection of designs I thought would be useful for my project. I will ensure that every section of my report has an accompanying image and/or info-graphic, and have decided to use the same colour scheme as previous public documents from Changing Lives to create a visual link between its existing public reception and the report I am producing. I feel that keeping a consistent colour scheme also strengthens the professional reputation I want the report to give to its consumers, whether they be stakeholders or members of the general public. Any images resourced from outside the Communications team's library has been sourced with copyright laws in mind to ensure the document is able to be published legally.
Today I have also contacted employees of Changing Lives who work in the various centres around Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I feel that a first-hand experience of the work the employees go through every day, and the services they provide to their clients, is vital in ensuring the report I produce reflects truly the impact the charity has had in the past year. So far, I have confirmed attendance on an outreach project on Thursday morning, in which I will be walking the streets of the city centre and reaching out to any rough sleepers we may find. I am also waiting to hear back from an employee at Virginia House, a mixed-gender accommodation centre for single homeless people from Newcastle.
I feel my experiences today have provided me with a better understanding of the organisation and communication skills needed to flourish in a working office environment. The skill to continue working on a task and finding other projects to work towards whilst waiting for information from a colleague has been very important throughout today's work. Additionally, the ability to consume a large volume of information and then condense it to the relevant points for the project you are working on, a skill I feel I already possess due to my experience throughout my university studies, has been refined.
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