|
|
Before Your Start-up Meeting
Here are some ideas for actions you can take before your start-up meeting to ensure a well attended and productive meeting.
|
|
|
|
Resources for Planning
Read the Suggested Agenda and think about ways you may want to adapt it for your group. Share the agenda with registrants.
Learn more about Action Without Borders and Idealist.org. Read up on who we are and why we're doing this, so that you'll feel prepared if people ask for more information during your meeting.
Consult the Help Section for frequently asked questions about start-up meetings.
Check out Moving Forward. It's a good idea to start thinking before the meeting about what might happen after the meeting.
Use Idealist to find local organization listings, campaigns, volunteer opportunities, and more. This will help you to get a sense of what is going on in your community and you can encourage attendees to do the same.
Learn from previous start-up meeting hosts about how to create your own tools and resources.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Communication
One of the best things that you can do is get in touch with those who are signed up to attend, before the meeting.
Getting in touch with registrants beforehand can serve as a reminder about the meeting and a way to build momentum and interest.
You can communicate any information that attendees need to know before the meeting.
You can cultivate leadership and ownership among attendees by:
Asking for their input on the proposed agenda.
Asking if anyone is interested in playing a role (co-facilitating, facilitating a portion of the meeting, planning an icebreaker, taking notes, being a photographer, etc.)
Encouraging attendees to do outreach to their friends, colleagues, and networks in order to get more people to attend the meeting.
You can download a list of your registrants and their email addresses, or send a quick and easy email to all registrants (or those on the waiting list) through your "Managing Your Start-up Meeting" page. (Click on "manage" next to the name of your meeting on the "My Start-up Meetings" tab on your control panel.)
Consider signing up to receive email alerts when new people register for your meeting so that you can send them a personal welcome message. To enable these email alerts, go to your Control Panel and click "manage" next to the name of your meeting. Then click on the button that says "Enable email notification," or "Enable nightly reports."
Attendees may contact you through email or through Idealist's internal messaging system. Make sure you are checking the email account for the address you have provided, as well as your Idealist inbox which you can access through your Control Panel.
If a waiting list forms you may want to follow up with the people on this list. You can encourage them to host a second meeting, and if you know that another meeting has been posted in your area, you can send all of them an email to let them know. You can send an email to everyone on the waiting list through your "Managing your Start-up Meeting" page. (Click on "manage" next to the name of your meeting on the "My Start-up Meetings" tab on your control panel.)
Consider creating an online discussion group (through Yahoo! or Google), a wiki, or a blog that can be used to communicate with each other both before and after the meeting.
If you have to cancel your meeting at any point, make sure that you remove your listing from Idealist by clicking "manage" next to the name of your meeting in your Control Panel and then clicking on the "Cancel start-up meeting" button. Attendees will receive an automated email from Idealist alerting them that the meeting has been cancelled, but it would be nice for them to also receive a personal note from the meeting host.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Outreach and Promotion
In some towns and cities where many people use Idealist.org, a host may only need to post their meeting on the site and watch as people quickly sign up. However, for many hosts it will take a bit more effort to get the word out about the meeting.
Consider all of the networks you're a part of and people you know who may be interested in attending a start-up meeting. For example: your family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors, or local businesses, schools, places of worship, professional associations, and community organizations you're involved with. Here are some ways you can spread the word about your meeting to these people:
Online:
Send an email to those you'd like to invite, or use a free online invitation site like Evite.com.
If you belong to any social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook, you can use them to invite friends to your meeting.
Consider posting outside of Idealist as well. Sites like Meetup.com and Craigslist.org are popular places to promote face-to-face gatherings. If you do this, you may want to add some additional information about what an Idealist start-up meeting is and direct people to http://www.idealist.org/meetings to find out more.
Offline:
Check out the section of Idealist's Community Action Center entitled "Gather supporters and promote your meeting" under the "Getting Started" tab.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
