Ol' Sandspur

This week I finished my article in the Sandspur, about Austen’s Café. Now I am working towards another article. On Friday I went to the alumni lunch and met many alumni from FSL Life and also from campus media, mainly WPRK. Throughout alumni weekend I was talking to many FSL alumni, mainly TKE’s. On Saturday we hosted a pig roast for TKE alumni, out behind the fraternity house and had a great turnout. I sat at a table with some guys and they were all swapping stories of the past, sharing past experiences with each other. I began to take notes on my phone, of the great stories shared. I would really like to write an article in the Sandspur encompassing these stories, and alumni weekend in general. I believe this would be a great way to cover a small aspect of alumni weekend and also fraternity life. I know the brothers in my chapter will pick up the issue this is in, and also it could be an interesting read for other people as well. This week I will brainstorm more story ideas and submit the alumni story on Friday for the paper. I also want to start getting the FSL profiles together for the paper so we can start doing that.

Volunteer Management Practices and Retention"

“We conducted telephone interviews with volunteer administrators or executive managers in most of these charities, asking them about their volunteer activities and management practices, and the challenges and benefits that volunteers bring to their operations. We learned that four out of five charities use volunteers in their activities, either in service to others or in helping to run the organization.” This is very important in terms of retention when recruiting for any organization. When you recruit the hardest part is to keep the volunteers interested and active. In order to do this you must find a balance in how much work you delegate to each volunteer. The hard part about this you can’t give the volunteer to less to do or there will become disinterested in the organization because they will not be pushed enough to care about it. On the other hand if you were to give the volunteer to much work, they may become overwhelmed and get out of the organization as soon as possible. Overall this reading was about the retention of volunteers. It displayed many case studies and examples to how volunteers can or should be used. “Charities that use volunteers to recruit other volunteers have higher retention rates. Having volunteers represent the charity implies trust, evidence of a positive organizational culture, and confidence that the charity provides a worthwhile experience for volunteers.” This is another great point made by this article. It makes sense to have your most engaging volunteers to recruit more volunteers. When potential members or volunteers see current volunteers really happy and excited about something it makes sense that they are more likely to join. I believe the Sandspur can use these tips to gain more retention. With higher retention of volunteers, there will be more regular writers so that it is a competition to be on the Sandspur.

Sandspur/WPRK/RTV Synergy

On Thursday's I have a hip hop radio show on WPRK, it is the most fun thing i do all week. Last week and this week i have put forth an effort to combine my radio show, the Sandspur, and RTV. I have a hip hop themed show; its focus is to play more underground hip hop, local talent and non-mainstream request. On Monday’s I go to Austen’s café, which regularly is a hipster type café but on Mondays it is totally different. On Mondays, Madd Illz the founder of Grind Time hosts a hip hop night. The theme of this night is to display local hip hop artist/fans/DJs through performances, or even just through freestyles. This place is really like a live version of my radio show, just with not as good of music. Since I am already involved with the Sandspur I thought it would be a great idea to write an article talking about Austen’s café and my experience there. This is a great story for the sandspur because it is a Rollins student’s account of a local coffee shop. Also I spoke to Tomas about doing a film a piece on Austen’s, thus completing the WPRK/Sandspur/RTV synergy.

Facebook is trending, Social Media is culture!

This week we had to read some articles for class. The “Just Facebook Me” article by Lori Brooks was very interesting and basically has been saying what I have been saying to my friends. Social media is here to stay. Although you can believe Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc, are trends, that may be true but Social media isn’t a trend, it is now a culture. Also when the author says "That’s what’s wrong with the newspaper industry [Newspaper} haven’t adapted to changing ways of communicating.” I believe this was true up until this year. I am now seeing this. Before, I believe the news industry tried to first adapt to the internet by creating a website, which was fine. But once online chatting became a trend, news websites began to lose some purpose and social media was born. Now trends later the big social media sites are Facebook and twitter. It now finally seems that newspapers and news shows are not just creating more interesting websites, but now creating profiles on all social media sites. This article stuck with me because it only enforces my campus outreach plan. The social media blast, well more of Facebook blast. If we have everybody in class start posting about one of the campus media outlets at the same time it will trend on Facebook, giving these sites more relevance. Also right now I believe in order to bring the sandspur back; we have to prove its relevance to the campus. I believe that we can start with Facebook.