Las Vegas Motor Speedway

SPEEDWAY CHILDREN'S CHARITIES

This company strives to raise money through various events, such as golfing tournaments, the NASCAR racing event, and Laps for Charity (in which people purchase package deals online and get to race their own car around the Speedway track!) to then supply these funds to Children’s charities that can help further aid children for buying clothes, food, hygiene products, schooling and even treatment for cancer. The SCC aims to impact as many lives as possible, and benefit through engaging the public in fun activities while coming together as one to give back to those in need. Through these events, the clientele is typically marketed through kids to adult demographics for most of the events; this can include the Laps for Charity in which kids can ride as a passenger in the car with an adult, or the golf tournaments in which mainly adults participate. Depending on the specific event, an appropriate age must be required, thus leading the company to target a certain audience. In terms of recruiting volunteers to contribute to producing the events, this age range can range from between teenagers that are able to work (16 yrs) to adults. Even though these fun activities may cater towards some age groups more than others, ideally children are benefitting the most out of all of these experiences as they are receiving the aid they need to thrive! As for the various departments located on site, there are a few sectors that contribute to the company: finance, Videography, marketing and my executive event internship segment.

My supervisor overlooking the store while volunteers are helping a customer sell an item!

The other intern, Patricia and I in the infield of the racetrack of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway during NASCAR 2022!

During this internship, I will be working under my executive director of SCC, Paulette Anderson! For any inquiries or questions, she can be contacted through her desk number: (702) 632-8242, her mobile number: (702)917-6493, or her email: panderson@lvms.com

Responsibilities As An Intern

During the course of my learning experience, I will be rotating throughout each of these departments, obtaining new skills and knowledge through Laps for Charity & NASCAR 2022.

Event + Auction: In this department, I will be running the live auction taking place during NASCAR, assisting in setting up and checking people in an hour before for this , instructing the volunteers for their positions on game day for the 50/50 raffle and tasks that must be done, running the merchandise store, capturing media footage to post for our company's webpage, ensuring that processes/registration go smoothly for volunteers arriving and signing off their papers when checking out, acting as a liaison between my supervisor and other directors while driving a golf cart around the premises, and fixing any other issues that may arise. In addition, I maintained this position as a liaison between my supervisor and the 30+ car clubs during Laps for Charity as well as the duty of checking in volunteers, approving of time completion for signatures as well as monitoring them throughout the events.

Volunteer Recruitment: For this department of the internship, I was in charge of contacting past and new volunteers and car clubs via email and phone calls to recruit for the upcoming events (Laps for Charity & NASCAR). In this way, I was able to form personal relationships with clients and directors while also contributing to the task of spreading awareness of the company’s mission and overall name to the public. During this time, I analyzed how the director utilized formal and engaging language to attract and persuade people to fill volunteer shifts, participate in the event as a whole, and recognize the strategies she used to utilize a golf cart during the event to communicate with the team effectively and swiftly to ensure proper function throughout the day. Leading up to the event, I was also responsible for organizing a data sheet for online volunteer sign ups, transferring their name, email, phone number and shift they selected onto our excel sheet for our personal records.

Planning and Development of Fundraising Events: In this department, I was performing multiple duties of mechanical work, including brainstorming ideas for logos, media postings, strategies to implement during the event do ensure that things run smoothly, physically calling, emailing and inputting data of information I gathered from each of the car clubs, volunteers and other individuals into an excel sheet. Furthermore, this information I collected was communicated to my director who then used that to further plan and strategize with the other department heads of the next step of process. Some other tasks I performed during this time included retrieving donation products from donators, analyzing each item and pricing them accordingly to their age, if they had signatures or not and if they came in sets; setting up the merchandise store that these would be sold in; assisting my director in figuring out which exact event spaces were qualified to utilize for each of the various events, and which ones are not appropriate; I had also learned the tricks to connect with various golf and car companies of how to persuade them to participate in our event, as well as of how to make everyone happy and accounted for.

Social Networking: This last sector of the internship I gained much practice of building and maintaining new and older connections with the company’s vendors, multiple directors of various clubs or businesses (also on site), the management team, and guests and volunteers through a professional communication manner, all while training on posting on social media, going on lives, posting stories or simply informing students about our events at UNLV. Through this department, I have been able to learn valuable skills and proper body language of observing my director and see how she interacts with others, and in return what responses she receives from them. In addition, I have been able to recognize my strengths and weaknesses in the process of communicating with people, and improve them so that I can utilize these moving forward into my career!

SCC Supervisor: Paulette Anderson

My supervisor Paulette is the executive director of the Speedway Children's Charities, in which she spreads awareness of nonprofit charities all over Southern Nevada and helps fundraise for these to provide assistance to children in need.

Paulette is responsible for Cultivating and managing multiple media and corporate sponsorships, planning and implementing large-scale special events, developing communication campaigns with traditional and social media tools, serving as charity spokeswoman for local media, working with Board of Trustees to assess and create new fundraising opportunities, recruit and manage volunteers, and coordinate fundraising events. Between these tasks, she supervises a board of trustees, interns and volunteers durig various events (such as the WNFR bowling tournament, car show, the NASCAR auction/Track Walk and more). Amongst her director role, some of her duties include hiring and promoting employees, scheduling and planning events & agendas, monitoring and motivating fellow colleagues and interns, budgeting financials and directing the events itself.

A typical day in Paulette's week would consist of social networking (such as returning emails & phone calls from constituents, vendors, and preparing the work time line for the interns coming in that day as of how they can best assist her during the development of coordinating various events that would take place coming up. In addition, she would prepare Board Minutes from monthly meetings, prepare the Board's monthly Agenda, secure corporate and media sponsorships for fund-raisers and speak to clubs and organizations to ask them to participate in the events.

Aside from work, Paulette is an incredible woman to work with as her optimism, joyous energy through interacting with others and being so passionate about helping those around her is emphasized through her kind and down to earth nature, grit, enthusiasm, pure heart, lovely smile and happy attitude! I am so thankful to learn under her direction and to call her my supervisor!

LAPS FOR CHARITY 2022

At the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, this event granted car clubs and the general public to ride around the track for a specific price, depending on the package they bought.

Here is a photo of myself, Paulette and the other intern!