National Philanthropy Day

On Wednesday, November 17, our class, Loyalist PR, spend the day in Kingston for National Philanthropy Day.
Started with the guest speaker John Cairns. A truly inspirational speaker. After which we broke up into out groups to participate in the different sessions.
First up was 'saying Thank You - Stewardship'. This session was given by Pamela Shanks. Ms shanks was a very interesting speaker on this subject. This enhanced what we learned in our class.
After a short break sat in the session of 'What's Hot, what's not' given by Taslim Somari. She talked mostly how your organization could use social media,especially Facebook and You Tube, to promote your organization.
In this session got the most interaction by one question: 'So what?'
It appears that a certain percentage of the fund raising population, has yet to grasp the importance of this medium to reach new, younger demographic.The other remake was 'well we don't need $5 donations'. Total miss on understanding the younger, first time donor demographic.
This is the one speaker I found that lacked depth. However, this could be due to the time and questions that steered the talk off target.
In this session, I learned that organizations need to grasp that whatever social media is out there. They need to understand the sufficient. If they do not know how to use this medium then they need someone that does.
After the lunch and awards, half of headed to a special session for our class. Here we learned more Stewardship form Heather Smith: Gift Planning with the amazing Liz Dobbs-Jones: and Major gift Fund Raising with Beth McCarthy.
After this afternoon, we headed home. It was a very interesting day. Even though we learned most in class, it was informative to hear others speak of their experiences.
However, the one thing I learned was the lack of interest of the importance of social media. I noticed the lack of wanting top understand SM impact and how it will benefit Non-For Profit.
Another comment that was expressed was why we, PR students, were there. This was a total lack of understanding the importance of good communicator.
I found that the local groups need to understand and accept new ideas because it will all benefit the organizations and the people they help.