Artifact 5

BI-WEEKLY INTERNSHIP REPORT

Department of Government & Justice Studies
Appalachian State University

Report # / Date Report #4/ 10/18/2022

Intern’s Name Sam Hodges

Site / Supervisor’s Name Cheri Beasley for Senate/Janani Gandhi

1. Period of time and activities covered. List the actual hours worked each day. Example:
8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Describe your activities in a brief but detailed and thoughtful
manner.

Day Date Time Daily Activities

Frame

Sunday

Monday 10/3 10:00 AM – 3:00 On this day, I continued to find donors for
PM the campaign. I also made a few phone calls
to confirm phone numbers.

Tuesday 10/4 2:00 PM – 6:00 On this day, I continued to find donors for
PM the campaign.

Wednesday
Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday 10/10 10:00 AM – 3:00 On this day, I was tasked with continuing to
PM find donors for the campaign but this time it
was for and email list and not phone
numbers. So, I utilized a new system for this.

Tuesday 10/11 2:00 PM – 6:00 I continued to find email addresses for the
PM campaign on this day.

Wednesday

Thursday
 Friday

Saturday

Total Hours this Period 18

2. Describe activities that you considered a real highlight of your internship this period.
Reflect on and evaluate what you learned from the experience, using your education
as a basis for analysis.

I enjoyed the change in tasks for the second week of this section. Finding email addresses for
the campaign was different and much harder than finding donors the way I had been doing it.
Originally, I was just confirming the identities of previous donors, but finding email addresses
was different. There is a website they use to find email addresses, but oftentimes, the email
addresses were not there, or there were so many people with that same name that it was
difficult to find someone. Then I had to utilize other internet resources and try to find a
person through other means. As I wrote this report, I will admit that I struggled to find a
meaningful analysis based on my education. However, once I started thinking about email
lists, I started thinking about how in my Applied Politics class in the spring semester, some of
the elected officials who dropped by the classroom would speak about meeting people where
they were with their outreach efforts. Older people were probably more likely to answer a
phone call on a landline than millennials, who might be better reached through text or email.
It helped me realize that what I was doing was a great, worthwhile task that could help the
campaign in this final stretch.
 3. Describe any challenges you encountered during this period. Explain how you dealt
with these issues. If you have not had problems, describe a particular individual you
learned from this period, their role, what they taught you, and why you valued their
instruction.

As mentioned in answer to question 2, I was given a new task: finding emails for the
campaign. Though this was not super challenging, it was different from the previous
assignments I had been doing, so there was a slight learning curve as I got started. I did
originally struggle to find people. I learned through trial and error which websites were
worth my time and which would not give me worthwhile information and only strung me
along for a long time before asking for contact information. I also received advice from one
of the people in charge of the project, who provided helpful information on how to use a
website. After using the website differently than I had originally approached it, I had more
success with email addresses.
 4. Bi-Weekly Report Essay Question. See the Internship Bi-Weekly Report Essay Questions
form for specific questions to be answered in the first, second, and final reports. For all
other reports, select a wildcard question from the form and provide a detailed answer to
one of the questions on the list, following all guidelines. In the space below, begin by
repeating the question number and question itself and then proceed to answer the
question.
__________________________________________________________________

8. Technology: Describe and evaluate your internship agency’s use of modern technology in
carrying out their mission. What devices/applications/systems do they use that were new to
you? Does your agency suffer from a lack of technology in any area? Discuss how technology
helps or hinders the work being done.

Modern technology allows the Cheri Beasley for Senate campaign to reach more people

than political campaigns ever have in the past. As technology improves, we can find and talk to

more people with the campaign’s message and try to convince them to donate to or volunteer

for the campaign. Specifically, in my department, we can track down and reach more people for

funds than campaigns ever could in the past. 

Modern technology lets the campaign reach so many people in North Carolina.

Television and radio ads for Cheri Beasley play almost daily all over the state. In addition, social

media allows the campaign to target the demographics who use those the most. In the past,

people would have had to send in cash or checks through the mail or have their card

information collected over the phone. Now, we can send them a link through text or email, and
they can conveniently donate money without ever talking to someone or leaving the comfort of

their own home. Innovations like this have undoubtedly contributed to making election

campaigns more expensive as the years have passed. 

In addition to raising money, the campaign can get the message out to many people

using technology. An entire speech can be live-streamed online on websites like YouTube. Then,

snippets from the speech can be chopped up using editing software. These snippets then get

posted on social media and thrown into television, radio, and social media ads. 

Specifically, in the finance department, the things we do would not be possible without

technology. My internship is entirely remote, which would not be possible without Zoom. Many

other volunteer interns and I are college students, undergraduate and graduate students who

don’t have the time or money to make a daily/weekly drive to the campaign headquarters in

Raleigh, NC. Zoom has enabled our supervisor to meet with us and give us instructions from

afar. We can also chat with our supervisor throughout the day without leaving our respective

colleges. We also use many Google applications like Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides daily.

Though I had used all of these applications before, I was surprised by how much the campaign

uses them, especially Google Sheets. Not an hour has gone by during this internship that I

haven’t used Google Sheets for the campaign. I also spend a lot of time looking for potential

and past donors online. There is no way I could find the information I need to contact them so

quickly without using Google. Finding a donor's address or contact information would have

taken so much time without Google, but with it, I can locate a person who might be interested

in donating or coming to an event in under 10 minutes. 

 From what I know, the campaign does not suffer from a lack of technology. Though

volunteers use their own devices for the campaign, from what I understand, employees get

campaign laptops provided to them. Overall, I believe that technology helps the campaign a

great deal. Technology enables us to raise enormous amounts of money and contact vast

amounts of people in ways that never could have been possible in the past. The rest of the

campaign relies on technology to both communicate and push out the message of the campaign

to audiences all over the state and sometimes even the country.