My Internship with Lift Louisiana
By Grace Harsche
This summer marks my one-year anniversary as the Lift Louisiana Development Intern. I was fortunate to spend my summer expanding on all of the wonderful work that I have done for the organization in the past. Specifically, I began focusing on donor networks more closely. Lift uses software called Flipcause that tracks how much donors have given in the past along with certain key demographics such as an address, marital status, and occupation. I used research that I had done in the past on Lift’s donors and moved all of the information over. Having all of the data centralized in one place helps the organization to better make sense of who is donating to Lift. These trends are particularly helpful in planning future fundraising efforts. Some of the larger donors or new donors also get a complete donor profile done on them prior to the first meeting so that Lift can get a better idea of what their priorities may be. This summer, I put together my first donor profiles. It was really eye-opening to see what type of information is helpful to have as well as how that information can be found.
I also spent several weeks researching and contacting local businesses to see if they would be interested in donating to Lift’s auction at this year’s Lift Louisiana gala. I first compiled a list of businesses and their contact information. Then, I worked with Lift volunteers to contact all of the businesses. Cold calling is always difficult, even after doing many rounds of cold calling for other projects, but I feel that this project gave me valuable tools in learning how to customize a script to really personalize interactions and how to have enough tenacity to follow up on awkward conversations.
My final large project of the summer was looking into making some updates to the website. I looked into the costs of getting a website designed, inspiration from other websites, and gathered information on specific features that Lift hopes to incorporate. This project was very outside of my comfort zone as I know nothing about website design. It was really exciting to gain a new skill and learn so much about such a pertinent topic in the nonprofit world.
This fall, I will be continuing with Lift Louisiana. This summer, I was working virtually since I was pursuing another internship in Washington D.C. I am so eager to return to work in person and get to attend some Lift events with coworkers.