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2019 Mentor Program Blog Post: Barbara Shipley & Mandy Hinson

By Mandy Hinson posted 10-06-2020 01:33 PM

  
MENTOR: @Barbara Shipley
Chief Development Officer
East Tennessee PBS (Knoxville, TN)
MENTEE: @Mandy Hinson
Director of Development
West TN PBS (Martin, TN)


My CSPI and mentorship experience has been a game changer!  I’m blessed to have Barbara Shipley of East Tennessee PBS as my mentor.  It’s the perfect partnership because we’re both from small PBS stations in Tennessee. and we both wear a lot of hats, including all levels of membership, pledge, events and now underwriting.

As the Manager of Individual Giving, I was encouraged by a peer at PBS to apply to be part of CSPI with the goal of understanding the value of PBS in order to grow my membership program.  @Toanya Kessé, @Beth Drake and @Anna Mcdonald's passion about PBS was contagious and I fell in love with the idea of helping our local businesses reach their perfect audience through West TN PBS.

I am proud of my first year, being a department of one in membership and corporate support.  With Barbara’s support I was able to prospect local businesses by using techniques learned in #CSPI to relay West TN PBS’ value and reasons that a partnership with us made sense.  Since starting this program we have seen a 200%  increase in revenue at West TN PBS.   I am so thankful for this program and for mentor.  Not only has Barbara helped me learn how to help my clients get the most out of partnering with West TN PBS, she has also become a trusted friend that I know I will continue to count on for years to come.

-Mandy

Everyone, if you’re having a bad day and maybe a bit down on yourself, you should just give Mandy a call. As you can see from her words above – she has a true gift of boosting someone’s ego! I really can’t say I was that much of a game-changer, but happy I was able to help in a meaningful way, and happy to have gained a life-long friend from the experience.

As Mandy mentioned, our partnership was a great match, both of us have the blessing and the curse of being from small stations. We were both “thrown to the wolves” left to figure out this corporate support stuff on our own and had a shared empathy for each other’s trials and tribulations as we try to figure this out.

Together Mandy and I built packages, prospected, wrote pitches, completed IVSs, and celebrated wins, and learned from our losses. And it was absolutely a collaboration, there wasn’t a discussion that didn’t benefit both of us. Together we applied what we learned from CSPI to a wide variety of efforts, we dove deep, we looked at problems from a lot of angles. In addition to helping create compelling IVS, sales pitches, packaging, and more, it has caused us to rethink the work we are doing and have the confidence to take new approaches – something desperately needed during this time COVID crisis.

As a mentor, I couldn’t have asked for a better mentee, Mandy was open to receiving input, anxious to apply it, asked questions, and sought out my help (Ok, so l will just admit it, it’s a pretty nice to feel so important).  And the best thing – she taught me so much too. Working with Mandy allowed me to look at my station’s issues from a different angle and gain a better understanding of my team’s obstacles. I pitched ideas to Mandy to see if they were crazy or not, and the experience allowed me to pivot where needed, put on the gas when possible, or abandon the effort when called for.

Together we looked for where we could have an impact. I am really proud to be able to help Mandy identify low-hanging fruit, prioritize efforts, discover unique value propositions for her station, and in true CSPI form, thread the needle, applying the process from the beginning of a sales strategy through to renewing contracts. And – how to apply CSPI fundamentals such as proof to the other functions we are responsible for.

As a mentor, it was gratifying to be able to assist Mandy to achieve greatness, and the surprise was – there wasn’t a conversation we had that didn’t impact me too.  While I just love all Mandy shared, I can’t help but think that I got the better end of the deal!

-Barbara

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