Category: Reflection

It never ceases to amaze me just how quickly time moves. We have entered the home stretch of the seven-week Communication & Fundraising in Sport course. More importantly, we are not very far from the halfway point of what has been a crazy year. The stories behind what is going on in our world are not lost on me when I work to put together the Siguenza on Sports blog. That is why I have tried over these last few weeks to incorporate current events into my posts, explaining the role sports play in those issues that our society faces. Going back to the comment I made last night about how journalism has stuck with me long after I quit working in newsrooms, my goal has always been to help people understand what is happening and why. And I hope that I have been able to accomplish that through my writings.

This week I also finished up a couple of projects that I have been working on for the course. Through my background, I have come to learn over time the significance of crafting a message that resonates with people, compelling them to take action. So I took a pretty similar approach to the projects that I have for the blog, giving a rationale for the position that I have taken.

It was mentioned in our live chat yesterday that hard work has become something of a rarity in our culture. Work ethic is an extremely valuable quality to have and I don’t want to make it sound as if I lack it, but I have found myself in the past working to the point of burnout, feeling as if my efforts still were not enough. So I have taken advice that I received early on in my television career, which was to “work smarter, not harder.” That isn’t to say that I do not care about the work that I do and that I’m not striving for improvement, it just means that I have enough awareness of my abilities and have been encouraged to focus my efforts on those.

I shouldn’t say that I have never attempted to prepare a budget in the past because just living life, you have to make sure that you can purchase what you need to. Still, I have never done it on a formal basis until just recently, when I agreed to do so for the class project I’m working on. It is a little intimidating at first because you don’t know what you should be putting money in for and how much. It became a little bit easier when narrowing the focus of what we wanted to spend money on. This exercise involves targeting a specific market, so it made more sense to reach that audience directly through digital advertising than it would through traditional methods like the newspaper or television. I’m working with other people on this project, so I’ll also need to take their ideas under consideration before it can be finalized.

Meanwhile, I have my hand in another project that is close to completion while still finding time to comment on what’s happening in sports. I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this until in the middle of writing this reflection, but I have decided to follow AP Sports on Twitter. Most of my ideas come from scouring social media for the latest and greatest and hopefully I’m able to inject a little bit of my own style into what’s being reported out there. The blog process can be quite time-consuming, which is why it has been an on-again, off-again activity for me over the years. I liken it to a jigsaw puzzle where you have so many pieces that you have to fit together. And much like my experience in Journalism, there is a short window of time to work with. I do enjoy being able to share my interests with others in a single location, though.

At least I think this is the end of the fourth week. Everything has become such a blur. I don’t even know how we’ve arrived on the sixth of June, to be completely honest.

You might have noticed that the website looks different than before. I ended up changing the WordPress theme to satisfy a requirement that photographs be credited to their creator. Not that they weren’t credited before. It’s just for some reason the previous theme would not let you include a caption on the blog post itself. I should also point out that most of the photos you see on here I have taken myself using whichever model iPhone I had at the time. As a communications expert, I have also made it a point to use a royalty-free service like Pexels for those photos not by me. One thing I do need to get clarification on is the social media posts embedded into my content–WordPress can link directly to the sourced material.

Also this week, I finished the second half of the text by Leonard (2012) on fundraising in sport, which focused on the different events that an organization has and the planning that goes into it. Leonard mentions banquets, golf outings, and car washes but now that I think about it, an 8K race would be another good thing to consider. I say that because, in my current role, I help with the coordination of what’s known as The Return of the Turkey Trot. Talk about time flying, we’ll have to start thinking about whether there will even be a race this year and what it will look like.

Finally, a lot of people’s minds are still on what’s happening in the world right now, and I was really glad to be in on the live Go Time chat yesterday that addressed the issues we face and how they affect sport. The situation continues to evolve in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Roger Goodell issued an apology later in the evening for the NFL’s handling of player protests, now the football program at Iowa is dealing with accounts by its African-American alumni of mistreatment. And so it’s a very unique time to be a part of this class because we’re watching organizations and athletes respond in real-time to everything going on.

Reference

Leonard, R. (2012). Fundraising for sport and athletics. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.

Seems like it’s the short weeks that end up being the craziest. With everything that has been going on in the world, trying to stay focused on this website and what all I need to do for the Communication & Fundraising in Sport class has been especially challenging. Still, I think it’s good to have that kind of challenge at a time like this not just because it keeps me busy, but also it allows me to refine my ability to bring stability and security to an anxious population through my work.

Fundraising is a big part of the work that I do in my normal life, and it’s the subject that we have transitioned to in the course from communication. The importance of one over the other in running a nonprofit is comparable to the chicken and the egg: you can’t communicate effectively without having the proper resources which usually requires having funds, but you need to have the right message to get people to donate to you. So both concepts tend to complement each other quite well in my view.

The fundraising this class deals with is of course in the realm of sports, which could mean the athletic department of a higher-learning institution as mentioned specifically by Leonard (2012) in his textbook, but also recreational facilities such as the local YMCA. Despite the emphasis on sport, the items Leonard covers can be applied across organizations in the nonprofit sector. They do serve as a nice refresher, however, for best practices in fundraising.

A scheduling conflict led to the cancellation of the live discussion we were supposed to have so I instead ended up sharing my experiences of working with volunteers and how my current organization shows its appreciation for the work they do. I can show you an example of a social media post we did just this week to honor a young man who helped us out during COVID-19.

We greatly appreciate the work that Bernard, a high school foreign exchange student from Ghana, has put in labeling frozen meals for our Meals on Wheels clients during COVID-19, and we wish him safe travels. #BetterTogether #MoreThanAMeal pic.twitter.com/73oTm2Ny3x

— Horizons (@HorizonsIowa) May 29, 2020

Even amid the great unrest that we as a society face right now, there is something satisfying about the work I am doing and I am more than happy to share in that with my fellow classmates, my community, and you, the reader.

Reference

Leonard, R. (2012). Fundraising for sport and athletics. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.

Before coming here to type up this week’s reflection, I wandered over to the analytics section, and it seems I’m rather popular in Canada according to the metrics. That’s one of the nice things about web analytics, which was covered in the book I read this week. It gives you a sense of where people are coming from, how they’re finding you, and what they’re looking at. It can even track things like sales, as Newman, Peck, Harris, & Wilhide (2013) point out. Of course, that is a bit advanced for me and I’m not selling anything at the moment per se.

Other highlights from Newman et al. (2013) include some practices I have great familiarity with like photos/video and marketing via search engines and e-mail, as well as mobile marketing, which is a concept I have some knowledge with but would not consider myself to be the utmost expert on. As I look to build upon my communications background, the reading was a nice review of those elements that make a campaign effective. Speaking of communications and journalism, you might notice that I have a few more entries over at the Siguenza on Sports blog this week, dealing primarily with sports and COVID-19. One post examines the starting up of youth competition this summer. Reopening business in the United States is a hot-button issue right now and while I don’t want to come across as overtly political in what I write, I think it’s very important to address the potential drawbacks to any plan with tact.

It was nice to hear about the NBA’s plans to return to action from an agent in the field on Friday. Justin Haynes gave a glimpse of what that might look like during his appearance on Tiell Total Sports’ Go Time show (personal communication, May 22, 2020). I would be interested to see how the league pulls off the completion of this season with another one looming in late October. It would certainly be a quick turnaround for the participants of the NBA Finals.

I think in general, things are picking up but I’m also starting to ease in a little bit here so I like where I’m at and onward we go.

Reference

Newman, T., Peck, J.F., Harris, C., & Wilhide, B. (2013). Social media in sport marketing. Scottsdale, AZ: Holcomb Hathaway, Publishers.

I don’t care how experienced you are in your life, starting something new can be very intimidating because you’re trying to get a feel for what you should be doing and you want to do it well. It never gets easier over time, you just have to learn to adapt to the situation as best as you can and trust that it will all work out. So it is with that I begin another course in my Master of Business Administration program, this one on Communication and Fundraising in Sport. Based on the experience that I have had in communications and media, with some fundraising as well, it seems like the type of course that is right up my alley.

For the most part, it has been a smooth beginning. I was able to get a refresher on the origins of social media evolving to the time of publication where it was and still is commonplace for businesses to use these Internet platforms to connect with their consumers. I was also pleasantly surprised by how quickly it took me to repurpose this website to include several different blogs (officially, they are categories on the website) to meet the requirements for content on each. WordPress is great that way and I am happy with the switchover to that system. There are some other great things in the works as well, which I am not ready to discuss in full detail at the moment.

On the subject of discussion, we held one virtually today following a question-and-answer with a representative from the Haiti Olympic Committee. It was intended to be an open discussion, which I felt complicated things because someone else would be talking when I wanted to speak and I wanted to make sure that the person speaking could finish their thought without interruption. So I could not get a word in edgewise and I was very frustrated by that because it seemed like I was not participating in the discussion.

I feel better after talking to a couple of people who reminded me that it is the newness of the process. I just have to learn to be patient with it and in the meantime, enjoy the journey. With that, I’m off to work on that project I can’t tell you about yet.