By John F. Jansen, NPC Guest Blogger

Being too busy with operations is no excuse for failing to build awareness through cyber channels. Whether your organization is too small to afford an outreach person or your outreach person is already over-extended, there’s a cheap and effective way for you to build community awareness.

Start a marketing internship program.

A marketing intern can immediately energize your outreach efforts, providing greater visibility, new connections and new ideas. And after a brief training period, you’ll have more time to do those larger projects you never had time for.

When I started at Community Shares years ago, my boss told me to “get an intern.” While it sounded like a great idea, I had no idea where to get one or how to structure the position. I left messages at local colleges, some of which went unanswered for weeks because it was between semesters. I sometimes ended up getting the wrong person and had to call someone in another department.

It was frustrating, but I was finally sent a student who needed some practical experience. My first intern accomplished very little, but I knew where I had made mistakes and vowed to get it right the next time – and I did.

Here are some tips that will help you create a marketing internship program that will build success year after year, like Community Shares has done for more than 10 years.

• Create a clear, written job description. 
• Create a contact list with the name and email address for every outlet where you want to advertise the position. Outlets include colleges and universities that provide students with career development resources and opportunities, free internship listings for Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee members on NPC’s Volunteer Milwaukee website (unpaid internships only), paid internship listings on NPC's Jobs That Serve website (free to NPC members, posting fee for other nonprofits), as well as commercial websites such as MilwaukeeJobs.com, which provides free internship job postings for charities.
• Familiarize each outlet with your organization (send them your brochure and website links) and learn what policies they operate under. Some require you pay a stipend or assign a grade or to do an evaluation. Log that data in with your contact list.
• Have your new intern agree in writing to a work schedule, with expectations for tasks, hours worked and processes to be followed.  The more professional your expectations, the better they will perform (and if they don’t, the easier it will be to part ways).
• In the first few days, share your enthusiasm with the important work your organization does, and impress upon them the important role they will be playing. Share your history and let them ask a lot of questions. They will be representing your organization, so make sure they understand and internalize it. Decrease your interaction as they begin to work independently.
• Make sure they always have a long-term project they can work on after they finish their regular tasks. This will shield you from having to invent new tasks to keep them busy.
• Have them log their hours on each project area and email it to you every week. 
• Treat them with the same respect as any other employee. That also means demanding they give the same amount of effort as everyone else. 
  
• Hire the hardest working person you can, but consider attitude above all else.
  
• After a few weeks on the job, have them fill out a Goal Setting and Follow-up Form.
  

For a special project, I once let a bright marketing intern draft a Social Media Policy & Procedures Manual, which was then reviewed, modified and adopted by our Marketing Committee. (It ensured Facebook and Twitter posts 24/7/365.) Later, it became a final task for each marketing intern to update the manual to reflect changes in technology.

For most interns, money is not as important as the experience and the connections they are making. A small stipend ($500 per semester) is usually adequate, and in some circumstances interns work for no stipend at all.

The benefits are enormous. In addition to getting constant cyber coverage and someone to write newsletters and press releases, you will hear about new tech opportunities, get fresh ideas, and maybe even gain a potential new employee. And other than the time you spend onboarding your new person, your program will practically run itself after a few semesters.

 If you have insights or college/university contacts you can share, please add them as a comment below so others can benefit!

By Molly Willms, NPC Guest Blogger

Theresa Jones had been hearing about the high rate of unemployment among black men in Milwaukee for years before she fully understood all of the contributing factors to this problem.

Jones is the Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion Strategies at Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, a large nonprofit healthcare system in Southeast Wisconsin.

WFH recently undertook an analysis of minority male employment within Wheaton and is in the early stages of working on their internal strategy. Jones will share what has been learned and insights at an upcoming Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee workshop.

The rate of black male unemployment in Milwaukee, disproportionately higher than the corresponding rate for white males, has also not improved at the same rate, due to myriad factors, Jones said.

Black males are also disproportionately incarcerated in Wisconsin, and upon release can have trouble finding work, for example.

Jones said many do not indicate a criminal background for fear that it will disqualify them for a position – a move that is guaranteed to cost them if the employer does a background check and finds that they have falsified their application.

“Most employers won’t turn someone with a criminal background away just because there is a criminal conviction,” Jones said, adding that the timing, relevance of the offense and an applicant’s history since the conviction are generally taken into consideration.

Transportation is also an issue, as many jobs are available in outlying areas. Strategies to improve transportation to these areas are being worked on, Jones said. However, there still remain a number of other barriers to obtaining employment like getting and keeping a driver’s license. These struggles can be married to a company’s need to fill positions that may sit open for long periods of time.

“Most organizations hire through an online process. Jobs are posted and then the employer waits for applicants to apply, Jones said. “To really begin to increase hiring, it requires more than that. We have to do more outreach and partnership with other community organizations, schools and colleges, workforce development programs, etc. to identify talent in this population.

Specifically, everyone benefits from “corporate and community responsibility for being intentional about hiring men of color,” Jones said.

The workshop, on July 29, will discuss the challenges and identify a process for conducting an internal analysis. Jones will encourage employers of all types to examine the employment side of the equation in their own organization: asking questions such as, in what capacity are minority men employed in our company? At what level? How much are they paid in comparison to others? How many are currently employed here? For how long?

“Do the math,” as Jones calls it. “Take a look at your own organization and you will, unfortunately, come to understand how that contributes to what community unemployment looks like.”

The workshop will also discuss the employers’ findings and strategies to meaningfully impact the black male unemployment rate, such as working with local training programs, schools, workforce development programs etc. to fill vacant positions.

"It is important to me to ensure that individuals attending the workshop walk away with strategies that they can implement," Jones said.

Jones will also address the role that racism can play in black male unemployment and the “business imperative” of hiring a diverse workforce in all sectors.

This issue is a serious problem within this community as a whole, which is why all employers need to work together to address it.

It can’t just be left up to a single individual employer, Jones said. “We can have greater impact collectively.”