During Winter/Spring 2016, I spent time working on creating, developing and executing a promotional and fundraising event for a local free clinic, the Good Samaritan Clinic in Sylva North Carolina. The clinic provides free services to people in the community who are ineligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
I worked with other students to develop a cycling fundraiser, where a student-run cycling group rode through the community and supporters donated money to the clinic in support of the ride. During the ride, the cyclists stopped at six different community partners (including the local hospital, the local community college and Western Carolina University) to highlight the community’s support of the clinic.
Our team developed the idea to connect the clinic to the community to demonstrate the important role the community, both businesses and individuals, plays in helping the clinic survive.
Our responsibilities included: coordinating a team of cyclists to complete the route, write press releases before the event and after the event, develop a social media plan to promote the event before, post live updates during the event on their Facebook page. We also created printed brochures and online flyers (used on their website, social media pages and in emails) to promote both the event and different donation options. We implemented an online donation system to ease the process of donating, which had previously been sending a check through the mail.
Below are samples of the written content we created for the event.
Good Samaritan Cycle Post-Event News Story Pitch
Good Samaritan Cycle Pre-Event Press Release
Here is a sample of some of the images we created for the event, including a description of the route and a picture featuring customized signs we created for each community partner.
Megan Mulrain 