Internship Experience #3: 90.5 FM WCBE Columbus
The next week and a half of my internship at WCBE was fully dedicated to planning and participating the the Spring 2026 Fund Drive. This week-long event gave me lots of hands-on opportunities to practice my business communication skills with donors, hone my graphic design skills, and even speak on the air about the importance of public radio.
The Fund Drive started off on Friday March 20th, and while it didn’t continue over the weekends, it did continue throughout the next week. Starting even before the Friday, the station was bustling with DJ show hosts, guests, and interns busy making promotional materials and getting the word out. I started off the Fund Drive by creating a Thank-You graphic for all of our Delicious Donors. These donors, who would be donating at least one meal for our WCBE team during our Fund Drive, were all contacted for their business logos, and I got to work in the online software Canva to make a presentable Thank-You graphic for all of the donors to be displayed on the WCBE website. This did not take too long to accomplish, and after a few preliminary drafts and logo changes, I finally had the graphic completed, which I included below. It is still displayed on the WCBE website as of the day of this blog’s publication.
The Fund Drive Delicious Donor Thank-You graphic, displayed on www.wcbe.org
Additionally, the other Capital interns and myself were responsible for picking up most of the food donations. Many of the places could not do delivery, and so we had volunteered to pickup the food whenever and wherever necessary. We had to make sure that we kept in contact with the businesses to ensure they remembered their donation and the correct date it was on, especially after a big mixup with one of the donors mistaking the day of their donation early in the Fund Drive. Overall, the process went easily, and I was able to practice my business communication skills while enjoying some tasty local food, too!
Finally, the other major part of the Fund Drive week was talking on the air. On the Monday March 23rd, the start of the full Fund Drive week, the Capital interns and myself got the chance to talk on the air during DJ show host Mike Foley’s Morning Mix. We were a little nervous going into it, as none of us had ever spoken on such a platform with a wide reach and large audience. However, we were really able to delve deep into the conversation, which really focused all about our roles and why we had wanted to work at WCBE, as opposed to other places around Columbus. Joe G. and Gracie K. started off the conversations, talking about some of the roles and responsibilities we’ve had so far in our positions. They discussed a lot about the live concert setups in Studio A, the promotional messages we’ve been writing, recording, and editing for air, and the work we’ve gotten to do with the high school student interns. They really gave a good on-air impression of the rest of the intern group, and both Mike Foley and Johnny DiLoretto helped move the conversation at points as well. After their conversational contributions, Mike noticed I hadn’t spoken as much and directly asked me why I had felt WCBE was a worthwhile and valuable place to gain audio broadcast and other media-related experience. I was initially caught off guard, mostly from general nerves, but I started talking about the general importance of public radio as a community service and resource. I talked in depth about the disingenuous and unauthentic nature of modern media source, highlighting how WCBE really puts originality into their music curations, concert performances, and fundraising events. I made sure to also touch on the creative vibe and feeling of the place, and how the historic aire to the station really emphasizes the message of putting the Columbus music community first. I feel like I rambled for a bit, but both Mike and Johnny were quite impressed with my contribution to the conversation, and after a couple of promotional shoutouts and calls for donations, we were all done on the air and the music was back on.
The rest of the Fund Drive week was very fast-paced, involving mostly social media content creation and promoting our guest speakers each day of the drive. We ended up creating over 15 social media posts between the four Capital interns and these really drove up engagement for our the duration of the drive. I’ve included some of the posts below to show. We also got to talk with some of the guest speakers and performers that came in, including members of a cat welfare program, a reggae band, and even an editor for the Columbus Dispatch newspaper. This definitely helped me not only in my graphic design and online marketing skills, but also allowed me to expand my network outside of the normal musical industry professionals.
