“Our generation has the ability and the responsibility to make our ever-more connected world a more hopeful, stable and peaceful place.” — Natalie Portman
This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to start working as an intern at Flint Group. It was my goal to work for a company that has a work culture that brings people together and creates a wonderful work environment for its employees.
Flint’s care and commitment extend far beyond the walls of their Fargo office and into its communities. With a focus on making the community a better place, Flint is always looking for opportunities to volunteer or offer their services to those in need. In working toward this goal, Flint puts together a fun pro-bono project for their summer interns to work together on and have an opportunity to make a difference. In doing so, they also create an opportunity for the interns, who otherwise may not get the chance to interact, to get to know each other better and bring their unique skills to the table.
Along with the other interns, Gavin Vink, Kaia Johnson, Tristan Ploeger and Kyle Schmidt, I worked with a non-profit organization that focuses on providing Olympic-type sport competitions for athletes with disabilities – Special Olympics North Dakota. The working goal of our campaign was to expand outreach in the Grand Forks community, raising awareness about the mission of Special Olympics North Dakota and encouraging volunteer participation. We worked on many different options and quickly learned that not everything goes as planned. With redirection, we built a stand-alone link to a landing page that made it easy for past volunteers to sign up for upcoming events. It is now accessible and monitored by Special Olympics and the director of partner channels at Flint to use for future events. Taking it a step further, we ran a paid Facebook ad campaign to promote the September soccer and bocce tournament. The Special Olympic athletes, coaches and volunteers participated in this event which took place in Grand Forks on September 16 and 17.
During this project, we got to attend one of the fundraising events for the Special Olympics (a golf tournament) to raise money for the organization. There, we met the CEO and president of Special Olympics North Dakota and the special events coordinator. Through this experience, we also met with volunteers and athletes who have become a large part of the Special Olympics community. We truly enjoyed watching how this powerful organization unites people across the state for competition and coaching opportunities, creating heartwarming memories and strong bonds. With guidance from our mentors at Flint, we took on client meetings once a week to make improvements and bring their goals to life.
Our summer project with Special Olympics North Dakota was a huge success! With 16,204 impressions, 8,989 post engagements and 478 clicks to their website, we reached our target and directed nearly 5% of people to sign up through their new landing page. Although as interns we had different focus areas, we worked through all the challenges and made constant improvements together which is what made it a successful campaign. I want to thank Flint Group of Agencies again for helping me grow greater confidence in my writing skills and showing us that teamwork makes the dream work!
“At the end of the day it’s not about what you have or even what you’ve accomplished … It’s about who you’ve lifted up, who you’ve made better. It’s about what you’ve given back.” – Denzel Washington
As a proud Flintster, I am grateful for the opportunity to make a difference in the community this summer with the other interns. It’s rewarding to know that there are many more opportunities to do so while working at Flint!
To learn more about Special Olympics North Dakota or get involved, visit their updated page here.
Don’t forget to check out our recent blog about Flint’s Commitment to Giving Back to learn more about how Flint continues to build company morale and give back to the community. Thanks for reading!