At 6 p.m. on November 3, more than 80 students gathered in a COM classroom. They were getting ready to pull an all-nighter—for a good cause. It was COM’s annual PRoBono event, in which students work until 10 a.m. the next day to create and present PR materials for nonprofit clients. Established in 2013, the event is run by PRLab, COM’s student-staffed PR agency.

“One of the things that’s exciting about this event is there’s no prerequisite—any student at the university can participate,” says Amy Shanler, an associate professor of the practice in public relations and associate chair of the Department of Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations. “They get a hands-on look at what it is to do public relations and communications for an organization.”

Shanler (CAS’96, COM’96,’04), a codirector of PRLab, says that when she joined COM’s faculty in 2013, the then-president of PRLab proposed holding the PRoBono event. “I just have a very entrepreneurial attitude when it comes to PRLab, so I said, let’s do it, let’s make it happen.” That first year, the event was held on the last day of classes for the fall semester and lasted a full 24 hours. “Students finished class, and instead of going out, they came into COM and stayed overnight. It was incredible. I think by 4 or 5 a.m., we were watching Grease because we were just done. We decided 24 hours is too long,” Shanler says. Since then, it has evolved to run annually each fall, for 16 hours overnight.

Yes, it’s a fun night for the students. But why are we doing this? We’re doing this for our community. We’re doing this to empower them.

Amy Shanler

This year, Mia Parker, director of events for PRLab, organized the entire program, from securing clients and sponsors, to recruiting student participants to planning how the rooms used for the evening should be set up.

“PRoBono is kind of like an overnight marathon,” says Parker (’24). This year, teams of students met with five local nonprofit clients—BalletRox, Giving the Glam, the Greater Roxbury Arts & Cultural Center, the Mattapoisett Museum and the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy—to create content that met each organization’s needs. The work students produce includes social media materials, campaign strategies, flyers, newsletters, media lists and pitch drafts.

The night began with opening remarks from Parker, COM Dean Mariette DiChristina and Edward Downes, an associate professor of public relations. Then students had dinner catered by Otto Pizza before sitting down to meet with their clients and get to work. Throughout the night, there were breaks for games and raffles with prizes from Ben & Jerry’s and Barnes & Noble at BU to keep students engaged, as well as a nap room for those who wanted to recharge. 

Shanler invited industry “coaches” to come in on Saturday morning and give feedback to the teams before it was time for them to present their work to the clients and fellow student participants. Many BU alums served as coaches this year, including Yalun Sleczkowski (’18), a senior account executive at Racepoint Global; Seth Delisle (’23, CAS’23), a marketing coordinator for Jewish Family & Children’s Service of Greater Boston; Maya Vaidya (’17), a senior manager of institutional marketing at Fidelity Investments; and Cydney Goldberg (’01), founder and owner of Ellebridge, a marketing consulting company. Faculty members Michael Dodge, a COM lecturer, and Josef Blumenfeld, an adjunct professor, also assisted.

Each client came to the event with specific requests. The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, for example, sought to increase engagement with its social media content that highlights winter events. They turned to the PRoBono students for help with developing a social media content calendar, a list of local influencers to potentially partner with to promote the Greenway and its winter events, and a list of media entities to reach out to and pitch story ideas.

Parker heard from many of the clients how grateful they were for the work the students produced. That, she says, made all of the effort to put PRoBono together worth it. “Towards the end of the event, all of the presentations were going on at the same time, in different rooms. But I was able to go around and peek in on them, and just see how excited and happy all of the clients were. It was great to be able to see the impact we had.”

Shanler was also moved by the gratitude the clients expressed. The client from the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy came over and gave her a hug. “She had tears in her eyes, and she was just so moved and so appreciative of what the students were able to give her,” she says. “To me, that’s really what it’s all about. Yes, it’s a fun night for the students. But why are we doing this? We’re doing this for our community. We’re doing this to empower them. We’re doing this to free up some of their resources and mental space so that they can achieve their mission and do what it is that they need to do.”