New Internship at Aspire

For spring 2014, I am still working as an research intern in another company called Aspire. 

Here is an introduction about myself. My name is Qi Yu, but usually people call me Vicky because Qi Yu is too hard to pronounce. Coming from China in 2012, I am enrolled in the Master of Public Administration in ASU downtown campus. My concentration in this program is nonprofit administration because I am really interested in bring what I have learnt here back to China in the nonprofit sector. I am going to graduate in May 2014.

Maybe you will be confused. If I am interested in nonprofit why do I work with a company as an intern? The reason is that I am interested in the collaboration between nonprofit and private sector and I want to see how the skill set developed in a company environment can be used in nonprofit organizations. After I graduate, I would like to work with an international nonprofit and bring impacts to local communities using my research and marketing skills. 

My three goals for this internship is 

1, further develop my research skills

2, learn how Aspire provide service to nonprofit organizations

3, become part of the group in the company and make contributions to its growth.

Final blog: what I have learnt in this internshp

This 4-month internship is a totally new experience to me and I really enjoyed it.

The first thing I learnt is that remote internship is not that bad. As I mentioned in my first blog, this marketing research internship is remotely working and I received training at the beginning of projects and other communications were done through email. However, I found that if online communication are done efficiently, it does not necessarily need to meet in person. Actually, online communication is more efficient because we won't waste time talking about unrelated topics.

The second thing I changed my attitude towards data and numbers. Before, I thought I was not a data-oriented person because I could easily become impatience and could not focus on details. Data analysis asks for abilities to look into the number pool and find the rule out of it. Now I think I like it! I feel like I found my potential.

I am going to dig into marketing research in the future!

Thank You Letter

Dear FGI Research,

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to learn about research in marketing field. I know I was not a perfect candidate when I applied for it four months ago. You can hardly seen any working experience in my resume that seemed to help me in research and marketing. Though I did have statistic class at a master level, you probably have received applications from stronger applicants that boasted these skills. However, you trusted me and gave me this chance. Being trusted, I was confident that I was able to learn fast and do a good job. This level of confidence has encouraged me until now and it surely will support me in the future as well. 

I appreciate that you teach me all the techniques and skills in marketing research. It was difficult to understand all those programs and terms for me at first as a layman. The collection of data sometimes drove me crazy, however now I learnt how to find out the significant points out of a messy pool of numbers and labels. Besides the skills, thank you for building the ability of being patience to details and regular duties out of me. I have never thought that I was able to sit in front of a computer and deal with numbers for two hours everyday. However, you helps me to find another me.

All in all, thank you for the rewarding experience that I was able to try something new and find the potential in me. I hope what I did as an intern contributed to your development too. Hope all the best in your future endeavor!

Best,

Qi Yu

The Strength of FGI Research

FGI is an company specializing in supporting strategy leaders define and reach their goals by offering a range of marketing solutions. As far as I can see, the strengths of FGI Research is as follow:

First, FGI offers a wide range of marketing solutions such as product marketing, pricing strategy, innovation, brand awareness, usage, satisfaction, and retention & growth. The wide scope of its services covers most of the fields that need to launch a new idea, a new product, and a new organization.

Second, FGI has a professional profile in serving its clients. It boasts over 30 years experience in research and marketing area. It have applied its extensive and in-depth knowledge and skills in market research with big data analytics to bring the clients the information they need to make the right decision for their business.

Third, FGI has competitive methods of marketing research to meet the clients' needs. In order to improve business results by providing the right insights to the right decision makers at the right time, online panels and research tools are widely used. Quantitative products includes SmartSuite, Online consumer surveys, SmartPanel et al. Qualitative products includes SmartSpace, SmartScan and Focus groups.

Forth, FGI services clients from various industries, from Grocery stores to electric utilities, from retail to healthcare, from media to nonprofits. The diverse of its clients gives FGI an expertise insights about the marketing in different industries.

Overall, FGI boasts the strengths in marketing research to help more people to reach their goal!

Career Service Writing: Job fair on October 30.

      On October 30, ASU downtown campus held a fall career and internship fair for students who are looking for internship and full time job. Around 80 companies and organizations has come here to look for talents. 

      I was surprised how diverse the employees were. There were government agencies, such as state government and the City of Phoenix. There were many companies from varied industry like news, broadcasting, entertainment, estate, electricity and so on. Companies like Allstate Insurance Company, Danny's Family Companies, Yelp, Inc. were there.  Of course, there were also nonprofit organizations, such as Help International, Valley of the Sun United Way, Mayo Clinic and The Phoenix Symphony. Though there were a number of employees in the fair, as a public administration and nonprofit student I was a little disappointed to see the small number of nonprofit organizations there, which was the main reason I left the job fair early. 

       As far as I have talked with the nonprofit organizations at the fair, most of them were looking for volunteers and internship for the winter and spring semester. It seems that most of them were really well-organized nonprofit with years of history, which I think was good and beneficial for students like me who was going to step into the professional career in a few months if I could have a chance work with them when I was still at school.

       A random thing happened on the fair that I wanted to share was about my name tag. Because I was in both programs of master of public administration and nonprofit leadership and management certificate, my name tag only showed the certificate, which I think was really cool and I felt good with it!

Free writing: Volunteer at Feed My Starving Children

Last Saturday, I volunteered at Feed My Starving Children helping out packing food for kids overseas! WOW! Two amazing things I want to say at first I show you how the volunteering went on.

First, I was amazing that our class project group made the efforts to come here to volunteer just because we were going to write a paper about this organization. I like how people try everything they can to accomplish something, which is a spirit I have not seen much in China.

Second, the volunteer experience was amazingly easy, fun, and full of love. 

Now let's move to the volunteer part. I might have too much to talk about it. 

This packing event happened at at a local church in Mesa, Love of Christ Lutheran Church. Surprisingly, people coming to volunteer varied from middle school students to retired couples. 

After we checked in, everyone get a headgear to prevent our hair from dropping off. No necklace and bracelet is allowed during packing food. After everyone set up, we attended the orientation.

See how cute everyone look in the headgear. They did a good job in orientation telling people their mission, what they are doing, where the food is going, and what impact it has. 

Here is a picture showing a staff member was demonstrating everyone how to team up and pack the food package. There should be at least 6 people in a group, one putting vitamin and protein in to the bag, one putting rice and grain into the bag, two people holding the bags and weighting them, and the last two people sealing the bags.

See our working station!

This is my project group and we had 9 boxes food that are sending to Philippine to help children suffering typhoon.

They also has a small marketplace selling bags and bracelets making by women in rural places. One of the amazing thing is that they put the maker's signature on the price tag so you can keep them! I like it so much that I bought a bag for myself!

Free writing: Nonprofit Conference on Sustainability Strategies

Last Thursday, Nov. 7th, the Lodestar Center held the 21st Annual Nonprofit Conference on Sustainability Strategies. I am so lucky to have the chance to be volunteer for this conference and attend some sessions.

Nearly 25 innovative and informative workshop sessions, interactive discussions and impactful networking opportunities comprised the recent "Solutions: Mission, Strategy, Impact" themed Annual Nonprofit Conference on Sustainability Strategies, presented by the ASU Lodestar Center. Participants were exposed to a variety of innovative solutions to common problems faced in the nonprofit sector, and gained tools for finding new ways to approach and solve their organization's challenges. (https://lodestar.asu.edu/conferences/2013-conference).

One of the session is really interesting talking about how to involve everyone at everywhere at every time. It talks about how to turn everyone you meet into your funders and donors. It tells about how to use the "elevator pitch" to sell your organization and how to impress people with your uniqueness.

For me, this is a chance to observe how nonprofits here get together, learning and discussing issues. It has been really rewarding and eye-opening.