Women In Nonprofit Leadership Event
Fellow: Madison Mancino
Team: Megan Connelly, Julia Smith, Stephanie Wengler, and Selena Denardo
Panelists: Emily Smedley, Sam Digiuseppe, and Risa Waldoks
Community Partner
The Women in Non-Profit Leadership Event is an event that the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative hosts annually that is open to all interested students at Saint Joseph's University. The event features past Beautiful Social alumni and their leadership work. Our main goal is to inspire SJU women to take on leadership roles both inside and outside of the nonprofit world. Throughout the semester, we have each taken on different roles, such as a facilitator, organizer, analyst, documentarian, organizer, and content creators. This has given us the opportunity to collaborate with one another, as well as the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative, in order to host a successful in-person event.
Challenge
When framing the design question, the ultimate impact was an important driving force. The impact our team is trying to have is to empower women within the SJU community by having past alumni come and talk about leadership positions as a woman. We are anticipating hosting a successful event in a covid world. Therefore, our challenge/question posed is: What can we do to design a successful and engaging in person event for Women in Non-Profit Leadership? How can our group advertise and gauge an interest for the event in a diverse range of students, as well as panelists? How can we address and discuss relevant issues?
Strategic Thinking
Since the Women in Non-Profit Leadership Event has been hosted by the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative in the past, our group had a foundation to base our goals for the semester off of. Throughout the semester, we have looked back at and utilized coursework from previous years as a guide. One of the most important tactics we have used was the golden circle and the story arc. The golden circle helped us learn the what, how, and why. Our story arc then helped us dive into the specifics of our event and our main goal.The coursework has helped us figure out essential parts of the event, as well as things from previous events that didn’t workout/we shouldn’t include. Since the event from last year had to be online because of COVID-19, our event will look a lot different this year. Looking at how students from last year had to adapt their event has not only allowed us to create an event that follows the same format, but it also allowed us to put an original spin on the event and make our own mark. We have learned to overcome an obstacle for an important event by still finding a way to host it. Any obstacle that may arise will be thought out and tackled. Last year the event was held on zoom and this year we have decided to host the event in person due to the decrease of the virus.
Results
In order to gauge what the audience took from this event, we made a Google Form for people to answer. Based on the people who answered, a lot of people who attended were actually marketing majors instead of communications majors which we found interesting. Around 15 or so people attended our event, but based on our Google Form we need to advertise better in order to have a bigger turn out. Next year we will try different advertising methods so we can get the word out better. Based on our feedback, people really enjoyed hearing the panelists stories. The audience also felt a lot better about finding work after college based on what the panelists had to say. People who attended said they gained interest in working for non-profits because of this event and they also gained great tips for navigating the work place. Even though our turn out wasn’t what we expected, we were still able to impact the people who attended and able to offer them the knowledge and comfort they needed about working after college. We were also able to film the whole event so people who couldn’t attend can still watch anytime.
Our Panelists
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Emily Smedley
Communications and Program Manager at Lancaster Clean Water Partners
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Sam Digiuseppe
Associate Attorney at Shimberg and Friel, P.C.
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Risa Waldoks
Acting Executive Director at Together For West Philadelphia