Susan Daughtry
Here’s the latest installment in our series on the “Day in the Life” of nonprofit communicators, where we ask you to describe your day in your own words.
Susan Daughtry has a degree in Fine Art and worked for herself in publishing and marketing for 25 years. After she sold her business, she went to a nonprofit that works with people with disabilities. She was there for six years when she was offered a job at a smaller nonprofit. Even though her title is Business Development Manager at Martin Enterprises, she has been able to use her marketing background extensively, plus she has been able to learn new skills such as making a mean chicken salad.
Here is her typical day:
Before 8:00 am: I look at my phone before I jump into the car, go through the McDonald’s drive through for $1 coffee (cute guy who always smiles and says “hope you have a great day”) and get on the road for 35 minutes. The wheat is up and is such an amazing color beside the green tobacco fields.
8:00 am – 10:00 am: At 8 am all of the managers and team leaders meet in the break room to share what they will be doing that day. I send a text message to the woman who operates our small eatery in the hospital lobby to see what she needs for the day – i.e. items from the grocery, change from the bank, etc. Today she needs chicken salad…I learned how to make chicken salad the “local way” and now I can whip it up pretty quickly.
Back at the office, I check e-mail and our Facebook pages. Then I start on an e-letter which should have been out a couple of months ago.
10:00 am – 12:00 pm: We purchased a specialty item company (t-shirts, trophies, embroidery, car wraps, anything that can be personalized) in January and I have been tasked with getting the showroom/retail store up and going. I had requested one of their employees who is awesome with building things to help me build two more pieces from pallets for the store. This takes up the rest of the morning…I stop at a fast food place for lunch in the car.
12:00 pm – 2:00 pm: The person we bought the above company from has not taken the old web site down. I call someone about that and meet with a woman who has moved back to the area about creating a new site. She seems very knowledgeable and I am hoping her quote will be reasonable. (Her father is on our board.)
I pull the e-letter up and it has disappeared…I had pulled a lot of pictures off the desktop and deleted the recycle bin. That was probably one of the files…so I pull up the last e-letter and start again.
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm: I leave work and go to Lowes Home Improvement to purchase stepping stones to use on one of the pallet tables. Then I drive over to a commercial printer to get a quote on a brochure I created for the embroidery part of the new business.
After 4:00 pm: I actually left Lowes around 6:30 so, yes, the “day” has gone a little past 4 pm.
Want to be featured in this series? Tell us what you do in a typical day as a nonprofit communications pro.
