Special Olympics State Winter Games hit San Antonio

This year's Special Olympics State Winter Games, running from Thursday, Januaray 31 to Sunday, February 3, will be hosted in San Antonio, which is about an hour and a half drive from Austin. One of the biggest concerns with this event is the lack of volunteers needed. As an intern with Special Olympics Texas, I have been experiencing a bit firsthand the mad rush for getting volunteers. I have written a press release and two media advisories in order to get the word out that we need help. I tried to do a bit of exploring on google by finding any article that pertained to the press releases that have been put out, and to my surprise, I found only a handful of articles, one coming from my press release and another from my media advisory. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty cool to see my write-ups being used, but I wish they could've been used more effectively to draw people's attention. If you click here, here, and here, you can read up on our urgent cry for help (the last one is from my press release). For those that are interested in volunteering, shoot me a message! We need all the help we can get....and in a way, this blog is a PR effort!

Now, a cry for help, which is prevailent in the last link and the link to the news release on the SOTX website show a somewhat lack of strategic planning. The date posted for the news release is December 19, 2007. It was good that Special Olympics Texas started trying to get volunteers early for the event, but there is no persistency thereafter. From what I learned at the office, the press release I wrote on Monday was the first for the event since the December 19th post. There should have been more effective and strategic planning instead of waiting until the week of the event to send out a release.