Interning at The Franklin Institute
Interning at The Franklin Institute
Introduction
Around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania if The Franklin Institute’s name is mentioned people know exactly what is being talked about and can name at least one exhibit that has been at the museum. Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I have had the pleasure of having field trips to The Franklin Institute as a child. After visiting the King Tutankhamun exhibit back in 2007, I never would have thought that one day I would be working behind the scenes of such an iconic place. Other exhibits such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Giant Mysterious Dinosaur’s, Titanic, and Art of the Brick all have traveled through The Franklin Institute and that is only naming a few! Every single exhibit that comes through the doors of this museum leaves a mark on the employees who help bring them to life, and I was about to be marked by the same place that touched me as a child.
During my Internship at The Franklin Institute, Genghis Khan and Art of the Brick have left a mark on me as these were the two exhibits that I was most involved with when first entering my internship. I also had the pleasure of marketing Vatican Splendors which comes to The Franklin Institute in the Fall. By being given the opportunity to work for a museum that is not only non-profit but has a big impact on a community is amazing. I got to experience firsthand how to handle the struggle of budgeting in a non-profit as well as how to market different exhibits to different targeted consumers. This is the biggest responsibility I had interning at The Franklin Institute because marketing involves a lot of research and strategy that takes a lot of time and effort.
My position was Membership and Group Sales Intern which is a part of the Marketing Department. Towards the end of my internship, Membership had been moved to the Development Department which is where most museums place Membership. Nevertheless, I was still the Membership and Group Sales Intern and I did research for a lot of new markets and targeted possible clients. Also, I reported and analyzed campaigns, researched school information for the upcoming school year (since most customers that come in are school field trips), and helped to plan and market new events for the coming year such as the grand opening of the newly renovated SportsZone exhibit and Vatican Splendors.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss my internship at The Franklin Institute and why I think interning is an important step in furthering ones education as well as developing ones experiences. I will focus on the responsibilities that I have had throughout my internship and how this internship has benefitted me. Then, I will move on to discussing all of the benefits that internships have to offer students and why internships should be taken advantage of whether paid or not.
Internships provide so much insight to an individual and can lead a student to discovering what they want to do after college. Internships can either open a door or close a door to ones future. What I mean by that last statement is, if one thinks they want to do something and intern in that field then they can determine if it is a good fit or if they are in the wrong place. Internships open the minds of students and give them a glimpse into their futures.
What I Did
My position at The Franklin Institute as said above was Membership and Group Sales Intern. Within this position I experienced the ins and outs of what a museums Marketing Department is like on a day to day basis. To my surprise, the team members had a lot of fun at work while still getting everything they needed done. For example, when we started working on marketing for our upcoming Vatican Splendors exhibit we decided that it would be fun to get a life-size Pope Francis cutout so guests can take a picture with “the pope.” It was fitting because the exhibit opens two weeks before Pope Francis arrives in Philadelphia for the World Meeting of the Families. The cutout arrived early so we had fun around the office by placing the cutout in different locations for people to be scared! Although this is not a normal thing that happens, it was nice to be able to have fun with the people I worked for and see them outside of the serious stuff that goes on.
Besides the random shenanigans, we got down to business every Monday morning during our Marketing Team Meeting. During this time we discussed what everyone was working on that week, any upcoming events that needed to be focused on, and any changes that needed to be made to projects or the marketing schedule. These meetings were not only to bring forward tasks but were also for proposing ideas that could benefit the institution. Everyone was very open and created a great atmosphere where I felt okay to speak my thoughts and ideas to not only my on-site supervisor but everyone in the department.
Since I was so comfortable talking to everyone, during one of the Marketing Team Meetings I proposed that we used the school information that we were already collecting to help bring awareness to an event that is relatively new, Sensory-Friendly Sundays. These Sunday’s are for children and adults that are anywhere on the autism spectrum. These days bring the opportunity for kids and adults with autism to walk around the museum with less distractions and smaller crowds. Having already been looking up school calendar information, my suggestion was to compile a list of the schools we find that have special needs or are strictly for those with special needs, and contact them directly whether through email, postal service, or by phone. Many people liked this idea and agreed that Sensory-Friendly Sundays was something that needed more attention. Since I was the one to propose the idea, I was granted the leader position of the project. I teamed with another intern, Alexis who helped me compile the list of schools by state that had special needs programs or were only for special needs students. After the list was made, letters were to be written up and sent with Sensory-Friendly Sunday brochures to each school.
Proposing something that many people on the Marketing Team liked was a great confidence boost and made me more excited for other assignments. One of the bigger assignments I was given involved researching which schools have attended the museum and which haven’t in the last seven years. This meant that I had to go back into our old ticketing system, Vista, to see which schools in each school district in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland have come to visit The Franklin Institute. However, in March 2015 we changed our ticketing system over to Galaxy. Due to this switch, the data for 2015 for each school had to be collected using both Galaxy and Vista to achieve the most accurate data. This information was put into spreadsheets by state with tabs by school district. To analyze the data better, pivot tables were used to see the total attendees per school compared to the amount of students per school district. The pivot tables also displayed the total amount of people by year and allowed us to analyze these numbers to find out other information such as: year to year analysis of higher or lower attendance, if certain special events did better, and even helped us to see if more students were coming for general admission or special events.
In between all of the school research, other smaller assignments were assigned to me. These assignments were just as important to the success of the department as the larger assignments. One of those projects was to compile the hourly sales for each day from March 17, 2015 to May 19, 2015. Finding the hourly sales meant compiling data on how many tickets were sold every hour each day for three months. Luckily, The Franklin Institute has a database where all of this information is stored. The only downside was that because our ticketing system changed, some of the data was not adding up. It was my job to find the data, fix it to the best of my ability, and present the information to my on-site supervisor, Melissa, for her approval. Melissa was surprised by the numbers that were pulled and found my numbers to be appropriate. She used this data to see how ticketing sales were doing compared to previous years.
Another assignment Melissa gave me was the task of writing up two E-blasts, emails that we send to customers that are quick to read. One was to be directed more for public schools and another was to be geared more for Catholic schools. When writing these E-blasts, the public school email focused on the core exhibit SportsZone returning in October as well as the special exhibit Genghis Khan. On the other hand, the Catholic school email was focused on the upcoming special exhibit Vatican Splendors and Genghis Khan, which will still be open when Vatican Splendors opens. My emails were approved with no errors and sent out to their respective schools.
There is a lot of writing that happens in the Marketing Department, and with writing comes a lot of editing. About every other week something was emailed to the Marketing Staff that needed to be edited. It could be anything from a Field Trip Planner, Spectacles, Newsletter, or any other piece of writing that would be sent out to those with memberships or other possible customers. The Field Trip Planner is designed for educators and educators only. It discusses the connections between exhibits and different school curricula. Spectacles are for members of The Franklin Institute and give sneak peaks of exhibits to come, reminders, and sales that are going on. When any of these get sent out there are usually three or four editing sessions before they get sent to print or emailed out.
While going over the Field Trip Planner, together Melissa, Alexis and I came to the conclusion that it did not make sense to send high school teachers the Field Trip Planner when it is focused more on younger students. We found that high school field trips were usually scheduled for the special exhibits at The Franklin Institute and not for general admission. We took this information to the Marketing Director, Kara, and showed her our findings and from there Kara agreed that a Field Trip Planner solely for high school teachers was a good way to try and bring more high school students into the museum. Fortunately, the high school Field Trip Planner was made, edited, and sent to print the week before my internship ended so I got to see the final product before I left for the summer.
The writings and other various assignments that I did were fun but nothing compared to June 29th, 2015 the day The Franklin Institute participated in Wawa’s Welcome America Festival, a weeklong event where Wawa sponsors free admission to a different museum each day of the week. The Franklin Institute was Wawa’s first stop. For this day, I helped sticker and greet people as they came into the museum, I directed people as needed, and I was in charge of the Go Forth and Learn readings. The readings were a big part of the day since we had special guests like Mayor Nutter, Wawa’s CEO, among others at the museum to read to the children. I was in charge of making the PowerPoints that were formatted for Franklin Hall, where the readings took place. I scanned each book that our special guests read and created a PowerPoint so the kids could see the pictures and follow along. At first there were some technical difficulties and the IT Department had to come fix the screens for me, but in the end the books displayed beautifully on the walls of Franklin Hall. Visitors expressed how great it was for their children to be able to follow along and read as the speakers read. Hearing the positive feedback made me feel so good about my work, and to see the kids having such a good time was the perfect reward.
Overall my experience interning at The Franklin Institute involved a lot, but each new assignment was worth it to see how everything comes together. Although I was in the Membership and Group Sales portion of Marketing, I still got to work with and hear about the other parts of the Marketing Department through our Marketing Team Meetings. Watching all of these people with different strengths come together to market the same place was amazing! Who knew that a website and a billboard had so much in common? Not only did I learn about The Franklin Institute but I learned about myself and pushed myself to learn things that I never would have thought to learn before this internship. Each assignment given to me strengthened my skills and gave me more confidence going into my future.
Benefit
First, as for the benefit of having an internship, there is not just one. So many benefits come from having an internship whether the benefit is short or long term. In college professors always talk about their experiences working out in the field and many of them talk about interns. After listening to my professors what I gathered is that interns are much more prepared and are often more comfortable in the working environment. By interning, a student gets the chance to work in an atmosphere that they could be working in after they graduate. Being given the experience over a summer or during a semester shows commitment and allows for that student to decide if that type of business is the one for them.
Secondly, the hands-on learning in itself is worth it. As a student, you get to strength your skills and put your skills to the test. Not only do you get to enhance your skills but you get to learn new skills that you can take with you. The different aspects of business that are learned through lectures and textbooks come to life during an internship; you can put your knowledge to work. Most of the time it seems as though what you are learning in a classroom is irrelevant, but the truth is most students want to learn hands on or want to know their textbook is telling the truth. The best way for a student to figure this out is to take on an internship that allows them to put their skills and knowledge to use. This hands-on experience lets students truly discover if this field is right for them and gives them experience to back up what they are reading in the classroom.
Thirdly and maybe most importantly, you get to network yourself. Internships are great tools for ones future. Internships can get you a job, a good reference letter, lasting friendships with coworkers, and can allow you to meet people from other businesses. Working at The Franklin Institute, I was able to meet people through the different events we would attend. Throughout the summer I was fortunate enough to be able to go to a tour guide conference where I met Nathan Claycomb from Sight and Sound Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and a variety of other people who were members of various organizations like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Please Touch Museum, and others. I received many business cards and they offered to give me tours of their workplace. Little gestures like that allow you to network yourself.
Lastly, interning brings you a sense of confidence you never had before. Going into The Franklin Institute, I doubted myself and my abilities, but by being able to learn from people who have been doing this for years really put me at ease. I would talk to my coworkers and they would explain things in a way that was easy to understand and if I did not know something they would not fault me for it, they would simply explain it to me. It is nice being able to go into work every day knowing what you need to do and not being afraid to ask for help or for something to be explained over. The people hiring interns are hiring them because they know it helps the student to gain experience, it helps them to get fresh eyes on projects, and it helps to get more projects done. Internships are more than just experience; they are confidence boosts and future evaluators.
Conclusion
In the end, The Franklin Institute taught me an abundance of things not only about myself but about marketing as well. I learned that marketing is not all about advertising, which is something I also learned in my marketing classes at Lock Haven University. Also, I learned that I am stronger than I originally thought. I was nervous and scared to do an internship because I thought that my skills were not enough to get me hired. As it turns out, I had a lot of skills that helped to get me the job. Confidence is a big thing that I struggle with, but this internship helped me to feel more confident in my skills and my future. I was able to work on improving my abilities, and I was able to finish many assignments while spending the summer at the most talked about museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The Franklin Institute showed me that non-profits run differently and that one day working for a non-profit would be something I am interested in. Also, I got to do work that I enjoyed and got to explore the museum whenever I wanted. I never thought an internship could be that fun, but I ended up having a blast and joking around with people who knew how to market the product they were selling. Now I have people who I can go to for advice and for reference letters all because I was an intern. This summer has been one I will never forget and it will probably be the summer that ends up getting me a job after college.
Suggestion
Internships are something I would highly recommend. It does not matter what major a student is in, they could benefit from seeing how their courses come to life in the real world. It is not enough to teach from a textbook, students need the actual hands on feeling in order to fully understand what is being taught to them. There are so many opportunities out there for students and there are an extreme amount of internships just waiting to be discovered. It does not matter if the internship is paid or not, the experience you get from it will show in your future career and get you the job over the other people. Employers are looking for people with experience and internships can get you the experience they are looking for. I always thought internships did not mean much but then I decided to apply. After being hired, my beliefs changed, I know my internship is what is going to help me get a job and that is why internships are a great idea for students.