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Writing For Nonprofits In A Professionally-Oriented Institution: Using Rhetorical Genre Studies To Teach Flexibility, Kathryn J. Gindlesparger

College of Humanities and Sciences Faculty Papers

Teaching rhetorical flexibility within a nonprofit environment to professionally-oriented students can be challenging because the seemingly transactional genres of nonprofit communication, such as grant applications,do not appear to invite improvisation. This genre analysis assignment from a Writing for Nonprofits course asks students to reflect on the intersections oftheir own values as emerging communications professionals and the rhetoricalchoices they made while writing in a nonprofit genre of their choice. To complete the assignment described here, students created a “personal code”that describes their professional values and used the code to write a genreanalysis that examines the rhetorical choices made in a nonprofit …