David Benedict's business resume |
| Everything you ever wanted to know about my professional life and experience but weren't afraid to ask. PDF format. |
| Also, my artistic portfolio. |
Welcoming over 6000 guests to spend the night per year, and growing rapidly, the sleepover program at the Georgia Aquarium invites students of all ages to spend the night with the wonders of the world's oceans and rivers. Consisting of a series of learning modules, participants will be taught lessons of conservation, biology, sustainability, and environmental science at a level appropriate to their age group.
In addition to monitoring the educational content and entertainment value of the program, there is a high level of customer care required in order to ensure that guests are comfortable with their decision to participate, as well as in their attempt at sleeping in an unfamiliar environment.
Welcoming millions of guests yearly, the Georgia Aquarium's informal educators, behind the scenes tour guides, sleepover facilitators, and birthday party staff are tasked with creating a welcoming, entertaining, and educational environment. This requires a staff of roughly 60-80 experienced, trained individuals, who will all need to be scheduled appropriately based on their outside activities (school, second jobs, etc) and the needs of the institution. Their hours must be monitored as well to ensure proper compensation for their time and skill.
ARTC is an all-volunteer organization. As such, each member has their own day job and participates in the creation of audio drama as their schedule allows. In order to maximize the ability of each member to promote upcoming shows quickly and efficiently, I began creating marketing toolkits that contain commonly used methods of generating word-of-mouth advertising with instructions for their use.
Posted on the ARTC Wiki, these toolkits include posters of various sizes, a full press release, and synopses of various lengths so as to conform to the character or word limitations imposed by community calendars published by assorted news agencies.
There is also the monthly ARTC newsletter.
ARTC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and, as noted above, all-volunteer. As such, funds are tight and advertising is difficult. But this is often true in the non-profit community, and if they can pull together they can each help each other. Partners in Imagination is a series of fundraisers held by ARTC in exchange for promotional consideration by the non-profit receiving the funds. By focusing on free and existing advertising channels (e-newsletters, social media, etc) the program seeks to ensure that the beneficiary doesn't eat through all their gains, while still providing exposure for ARTC. It is a unique program that is still finding its feet in some ways, but has raised significant funds for the Center for the Visually Impaired, The Office of Letters and Light, and other non-profits in the Atlanta area.
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