Week 2: ALSAC vs. St. Jude

After reading Page Soper’s blog post on the difference between the newsroom and the business side of The New York Times I decided to write mine on the difference between ALSAC and St. Jude. Although St. Jude serves a very different purpose than the New York Times, the hospital and ALSAC (the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital) exit similarly. Like the business side of the Times, ASLAC exists to support and keep the hospital running. And like the two sides of the Times, the two sides of St. Jude exist for and because of each other. Every person on the ALSAC side lives and breathes St. Jude and are wildly mission driven. The people at ALSAC recognize that it is their duty to raise the funds necessary to keep the hospital running, the research department discovering, and both departments expanding. In my HR training, before the presentation began, the lady running it had a slide of faces of children that have been treated at St. Jude and have survived.  She looked at us and said “These are our bosses. We work for them.” It is amazing to see just how connected every branch of the organization is to St. Jude’s mission and that everyone, whether that be doctors, nurses and researchers or the marketing, field operations, etc. over at ALSAC, strives towards saving children’s lives.

I work in the Field Operations department of ALSAC under my supervisor Mary Kate Tolan.  As quickly as I realized relationships are the key to success in ALSAC, I have realized that pretty much everyone at the organization knows Mary Kate. I work as a Youth Development intern, but am part of a specific Tri Delta program. I work with two other interns and we are assisting in the planning of two large collegiate conferences that strengthen the partnerships between St. Jude and collegiate organizations.  Although it is only week 2, I have already been pulling and creating weekly reports to show top fundraising Tri Delta chapters to motivate increased fundraising. For the planning of the conferences, we are given agency and assigned different events during the conference to plan on our own.  So far, I have been acting as the lesion for presenters, putting together an event logistics plan and attending planning meetings with people in all different departments.  The amount of independence we are given is fantastic and we are held to a professional standard rather than being treated as interns.  I hope in the following weeks, I will have even more tasks in order to contribute to the St. Jude mission, a mission that everyone, whether on the hospital side or at ALSAC, lives by.