CharityComms

Remember those endless hours spent trawling the jobs pages for your big break into the charity world? If you don’t, consider yourself lucky. Competition for communications jobs in the third sector is fierce, and it’s hard to know how much your academic qualifications weigh compared to other attributes, such as commitment to the cause or practical experience.

So what is the secret of getting your foot in the charity door? And once you’re in, how do you keep ahead of the game? Within the broad church of communications work, there is no sure-fire recipe for success. But there are some well-worn routes up the career ladder.

After all, the essence of much charity communications involves the spread of information and the relationship between PROs and journalists. It’s therefore no surprise that many communications professionals come from either side of the divide.

News sense

WWF’s Senior Press Officer Rob McNeil has his foot firmly in the journalists’ camp. After studying archaeology at university, he found his way onto a local newspaper and ended up on the news desk of the Evening Standard. Today, he says his well-honed news sense is an invaluable tool, and compares trying to convince the media to run his story to a freelance journalist pitching a feature.

“I see myself as a journalist who has grasped PR,” he explains. “My background helps when it comes to identifying stories and writing them in a way that is media friendly. At the end of the day, we’re trying to get into the minds of journalists.”

For Miriam Ross, this has been an ongoing challenge. Before joining human rights charity Survival International as Press and Campaigns Officer six years ago, she had very little experience of dealing with the media.

“When I started, I was in at the deep end,” says the history and politics graduate. “I just had to pick up the phone and start calling journalists around the world. It was a case of mucking in.”

Hands-on approach

Nevertheless, this hands-on approach can be a great way to learn important lessons. After all, there is only so much you can glean from textbooks.

“I have learned what headlines and first paragraphs work by what gets picked up by the media,” says Miriam, who started out as a volunteer charity campaigner. “Our biggest campaign has been around the Kalahari Bushmen in Botswana. At the start, no one was interested and I thought journalists would only want to run something if it was an exclusive – but it actually proved to be the other way round.”

“It was all about the build up. Once a few papers started doing stories, the others thought they better had too. Since then, the phones have been ringing and ringing.”

In the last year, Miriam has taken her first formal courses in public relations. She says that joining Survival International’s trips to Botswana, India and Sri Lanka and witnessing the work being done on the ground, has also given her added confidence when communicating with the press.

Practical experience

Charity communications isn’t just about the PR-journalism divide, however. For Andy Stephens, Marketing Services Assistant at Macmillan Cancer Support, words are important in a different way. “

A large part of my role involves proofreading internal and external communications materials,” he says. “That’s where my journalism degree comes in handy.”

Andy also has a Masters degree in Marketing, which he says helps him to play an active role in marketing team meetings. Given his academic background, he seems almost ideally suited to the role. But securing a job offer was far from easy. After applying unsuccessfully for several charity positions, Andy knew he needed to prove himself even further.

“It was only after I began volunteering at a local cancer charity that I started getting interviews,” he says. “Here, my degrees help but I’m still getting a lot of on-the-job training. At the end of the day, the academic stuff is great but it doesn’t replace practical experience.”

Common sense

Back at WWF, Rob McNeil says that the key to success in his line of communications is not about qualifications either. It is about the right mentality.

“Most of our job is common sense and you don’t need a specialist journalism or PR background,” he says. “Instead, the key is to recognise that the media is an industry. You can’t go in thinking a newspaper should run a story because it’s important to you. You have to think about it as a way of increasing their sales or viewing figures. That way, you’re giving people exactly what they need. ”