Day in the Life of a Nonprofit Communicator – Kim Rescate

Posted By Kristina Leroux, Community Engagement Manager on Aug 25, 2014

Here’s the latest installment in our series on the “Day in the Life” of nonprofit communicators, where we ask you to describe your day in your own words.

Kim Rescate is a lover of food and a runner (’cause of all the food). Though her passion for most things geeky is certainly a main driving force in her life, she also loves traveling and snowboarding. Kim works in communications at Alliance San Diego, but hopes it leads to a recurring role in Doctor Who, or Lost Girl.

Here is her typical day:

Before 8:00 am: Check emails before heading to work.

Read news from all my news aggregator apps.

Check social media networks, personal and professional.

8:00 am – 10:00 am: Walk the dog, wash dishes, and get ready to head to work.

Grab Pineapple Apple Orange Juice and Acai Smoothie from my favorite spot near home.

10:00 am: Read and respond to emails.

11:30 am – 12:30 pm: Draft press releases, media advisories and e-newsletters.

Post articles on websites. We post articles that are written by the staff about their programs such as education equity, immigration reform, and DACA. We also repost articles that mention our organization or one of our coalitions. One of our main concerns is immigration reform, so we repost news articles and blogs that are of interest to our readers.

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm: Read and respond to comments on our 5 websites and social media networks. Alliance San Diego (ASD) is a community empowerment organizations that builds coalitions such as Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) and San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium (SDIRC) to promote justice and social change.

SBCC launched the Revitalize Not Militarize (RNM) campaign which expresses the need to invest in border communities and improve the quality of life for border residents while improving trade for the nation.

Recently, ASD launched the Vote For San Diego campaign which will help empower and give San Diegans a voice in the upcoming elections. I manage ASD, SBCC, SDIRC, RNM and Vote For San Diego websites along with each of their social media sites, (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and Vine), YouTube and Flickr accounts.

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm: Grab lunch. Well, mostly around this time but there are certainly times when lunch time happens after 4 p.m.

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm – Take photos of events. If there are any events within our organization and coalitions, I document them through photographs and video. The most recent one is a 9-day training workshop through ASD’s Vote For San Diego campaign, Neighborhoods Rising Institute. I took photographs of the participants, created memes and interviewed the community on the importance of participating in the electoral process.

Post content on social media sites which are either our own content or to support one of our coalitions.

Update plug-ins on website and review analytics. With our social media sites, I keep track of the reach and engagement. I pay attention to our audience growth rate which allows me to evaluate our marketing efforts over time. Tracking engagement allows me to check the “pulse” of our existing network and whether our social media efforts are resonating with our audience. For our websites, I keep track of how many people visit our sites, which posts they are most interested in and from where they are visiting (a link from Facebook or perhaps they did a direct search for our organization’s name).

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm: Plan for the next day, tie up loose ends, return phone calls, ensure that all emails have been taken care of, check-in on what’s due the next day and, if there are no meetings scheduled, head home.

The job, of course as any communicator, requires that we are on call 24 hours in case of a breaking news that we may need to respond to via a press release. My day can start as early as 4 a.m. to as late as, well, 4 a.m. I’d say I pretty much check my emails every waking moment. I’m so grateful I love what I do.

Article source: http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/blog/2014/08/25/day-in-the-life-of-a-nonprofit-communicator-kim-rescate/#sthash.NKWK9A5e.dpuf