Takeaways from Advanced Professional Writing
I am appreciative of the skills I have gained from being in the course, Advanced Professional Writing. During my time in that class, I learned how to write successfully for a nonprofit organization. The lectures my professor gave taught the students how to write grant proposals, develop creative social media content, design a website for an organization, conduct writing workshops, and use Canva. Additionally, there were presentations given by professionals who had experience working with nonprofits that informed the students about careers and how to contribute to the nonprofit organizations they were assigned. After listening to the speakers, I was able to grasp a better understanding of fields that use nonprofit writing on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, I took away how crucial it is to create content in a way that draws the viewer in while incorporating the jargon that organization uses on all of their websites, social media, and any of their writing. Advanced Professional Writing helped me use my skill sets towards writing collaboratively. Being in a group taught me the importance of communicating effectively and efficiently. By being in this course, I also learned how to manage my time successfully by turning in each of my assignments on time while going above and beyond. These are skills that I will be able to continue to utilize in future careers.
Click here to access the collaborative grant proposal
The intended audience for the grant proposal was the Office of Service Learning. The purpose in writing this piece was to gain experience in grant writing while asking for funds to support students in the Advanced Professional Writing course. The reason my group wrote this piece was because we wanted to showcase what would make the class more successful.
Profile of CoAct
In Advanced Professional Writing, the entire class was divided into small groups based on the organizations they were the most interested in creating content for. I was assigned, along with two other students, to a nonprofit organization called CoAct. We all learned how to work together to develop social media content and writing for the nonprofit. We successfully used our skills to design posts. By creating a social media strategy, my team collaboratively worked together to write down ideas that would be beneficial for the organization to implement in the future in order to draw more attention to their social media platforms and who they are as a nonprofit. I discovered, after helping CoAct, that nonprofits tend to need help with designing social media content, writing for their websites, and developing ideas for future content in order to draw more attention to the work that they do. My team also developed a profile of CoAct that we wrote collaboratively. In order to put this piece together, we researched the nonprofit thoroughly, had Zoom meetings with the founder of the organization, and communicated as a group to one another whenever we needed more clarity on a topic. The intended audience for the profile my team created was for community members interested in the organization and the Advanced Professional Writing students and professor. The purpose of the profile was to highlight who CoAct is and what they do as a nonprofit. Additionally, the reason we wrote the profile was so that my team could develop a better understanding of CoAct and their history.
Click here to access the collaborative profile
Samples of Content Created for CoAct
Click here to access
Click here to access
Samples of My Social Media Content
The intended audience for these social media posts and stories was for CoAct's followers, those interested in volunteering, donors, sponsors, and people in the DFW community. The purpose of these posts was to get viewers engaged by showing them creative and interesting content. My group was assigned to create posts about holidays, vendor events, stories, and more. I used the color palette CoAct normally uses while adding my own creative touch. The reason that I used this color scheme was because I wanted my designs to flow with the rest of their content. My goal for these posts was to draw more attention to the nonprofit while displaying informative content. The images below were created only by me.