DIVERSITY IN THE PR INDUSTRY

I've always felt there are great benefits to joining accredited associations. I was utterly distraught by the thought that my postgraduate degree was not acknowledged by the CIPR which means upon the completion of the postgraduate, I will not receive an automatic membership into the association. My desire to join one of these associations is because I strongly believe they can often open doors. Surely I'm not the only person that can see this.

Which leads to the question, why are minorities not in these association and why aren't many of them thinking like I am?

According to Shirley Harrison's Public Relations: An Introduction There are approximately 48,000 people in the UK working in Public Realtions in some way, out of this only 6,000 are currently registered with an association.

As it is clearly not a pre-requisite, I strongly urge minorities to join associations for the following reasons –

 Networking
 Professional development
 Accreditation
 Mentoring

I would also like to ask these association for full support. I believe the three greatest barriers why minorirties are not joining the professional organisations include cost of annual membership dues, lack of diversity among membership and insufficient amount of time to participate.

These organisations can help by

1) looking for ways to partner with racially-based PR organisations to provide discounts on professional development and networking opportunities
2) cultivate professional associations with other minority organisations, such as the Urban League, to better understand diversity issues and to help publicize PR opportunities.