Conferences, Workshops, and Meetings for Affected Individuals
From WikiAdvocacy
Conferences, workshops, and meetings are effective ways to teach your membership about your organization's condition and to create and strengthen your members' sense of community. Creating these events involves two major tasks: determining the scope and objectives of your meeting, and doing the logistical planning for the event.
[edit] Determining the Scope and Objectives of Your Meeting
Conferences include many sizes and types of events. They can be as simple as an afternoon session with a speaker followed by some social time, or as extensive as a lodgings-based multiday event with a mix of speakers and activities and with meals served on site. Consider these issues as you plan conferences:
- Your members' interests
- Your goals for serving your membership
- Costs
- Available resources
When creating a new conference, survey your members. Ask them what they want from a conference, how much time they would want to spend, how far they would be willing to travel. Ask them what they can afford, and get a sense of how many interested members would require financial assistance. Even if you know for certain that your members need a certain kind of conference or educational experience, the starting point should be what they want.
This is initial part of planning is where you can ask open-ended questions, such as "what time of year works best for your family?"
Tips for Date Selection
- Spring and fall meetings have good attendance. Families may travel during the summer, so offering the meeting as a vacation may have appeal. Winter storms can hinder travel.
- Off-season times (March to early April, mid-November) may offer better opportunities to negotiate travel and hotel rates.
- Consider holidays as you plan events—not just major holidays but feast days and other observances, depending on your members' affiliations. Holidays (such as Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day) can mean lower rates for hotels in business cities.
- Know when specialists that focus on your organization's condition go to their professional meetings. You may lose potential speakers if your conference coincides with meetings they must attend.
[edit] Your Members' Interests
Ask them what they want. This is their conference, and it cannot succeed unless it meets real needs. Some questions to consider: do they want a one-day conference or something longer? Do they want to meet on a weekend or weekday? Are there particular holidays that could coincide with this conference? Are there holiday periods you should avoid? What can they afford?
Answers to these questions will help you get a sense of how many people will actually come to a conference, a crucial starting point for planning location and activities.
[edit] Your Goals for Serving Your Membership
This is where you reconcile your sense of what your members need with what they want, and where you use what they want to create a curriculum for getting it to them. They may say their top need is to learn how to work for a cure for their children. This could translate into a conference in which they get talks about the current state of research from scientists along with workshops about informed consent and donating tissue.
[edit] Costs
Travel distances, lodging options, speaker costs, and supplies for the meeting will all figure into your final budget. It takes time to establish the details of this budget, but you'll need to start with a ballpark figure. As you consider what your families want and what your organization needs to share with them, you need to go beyond what families can afford and have a good sense of what your organization's costs will be. Consider name badges, signs for the conference site, packets for the members, registration forms, mailing costs, equipment rental, honoraria or gifts for your speakers, day care, etc.
Scholarships for your participants/families/members
[edit] Tips for Budgeting
- Plan on about $1,000.00 per keynote speaker (travel, hotel, incidentals).
- You can negotiate almost any price when working with a hotel, especially if your attendance will be large.
- Plan on gratuities of about 25% for meals.
- You will always pay service taxes and may pay other taxes if your organization does not have state tax-exempt status.
- Don't forget conferences badges, printing and mailing costs, equipment rentals, gifts for speakers, and day care costs.
[edit] Available Resources
Consider in-kind and financial donations your organization can obtain. Is there a church that can offer space for your meeting? Are there manufacturers whose products your membership uses routinely? As with costs, you'll revisit resources as you do logistical planning, but a general sense of whom you can tap will help you scope your meeting effectively.
[edit] Tips for Getting Funding
- Exhibitor fees average $1,000.00 per booth.
- Give potential exhibitors about 6 months of lead time.
- If a company can't exhibit, ask for a donation.
- Do your members use specific products regularly, whether over-the-counter supplies or prescription medications? Ask the makers to exhibit or to provide a donation.
[edit] Logistical Planning
Logistical planning revisits the same issues as setting scope and objectives, and you will also get feedback from your members in this phase, but the questions you ask will come with a range of options, as opposed to be open-ended.
There are several major aspects to planning a conference:
- Site selection
- Date selection
- Budgeting
- Funding
- Speaker selection and management
- Childcare
- Managing the timeline
- Post-event communication
[edit] Tips for Managing the Timeline
- Start planning your conference 12 to 14 months before the date.
- Book the site 12 to 14 months in advance.
- Book your speakers 9 to 12 months in advance, but don't print those conference agendas quite yet!
- From about six months before the date, start advertising heavily to your members. They will need constant reminders. Get them excited!
- Request exhibits or donations about six months ahead, and follow up closely. Once you know your sponsor revenue, you can estimate registration costs.
- Mail registration forms about six to eight weeks before the registration deadline, but prepare to receive the majority of registrations just after the deadline date.
- As you are sending registration information, ask your speakers for a biographical sketch, any handouts they wish to use, and their AV requirements.
- Finalize the conference agenda as the registrations are coming in.
- As your registrations are coming in, prepare packets for your attendees.
Careful preparation means more time—and energy—to put out the inevitable last-minute fires!
[edit] Site Selection
Are your members clustered in one area? How close is your organization's location to the majority of members? What people resources do you have for the nitty-gritty of planning and working with the conference site?
What are your space requirements? You've already decided whether you need a church basement or a hotel; do you need multiple rooms for concurrent sessions? For exhibitors? For socializing?
[edit] Tips for Site Selection
- The number of people interested is the biggest factor in establishing the scope and location of your meeting.
- Hotel rates should be around $100.00 a night.
- Does the site you are considering have an indoor pool? An area where families can socialize?
[edit] After the Conference
- Send thank-you notes to all the volunteers, speakers, contributors, vendors, and other people who participated in the conference. Additional ways to show appreciation to conference speakers includes: giving the speakers a bag or t-shirt with the organization's logo, a plaque, or some other small gift such as gourmet popcorn.
- Send thank-you notes and evaluation forms to the attendees.
- Did you realize in hindsight that you should have done something differently? Write it down!
