Organizing & Planning

This section provides a guide on how to get started with the organizing and planning of social and community events.

Tips & Best Practices

Goals

• Establishing goals for the event in advance can help with preparation and planning.

  • Is the goal of this event simply to connect socially, or to accomplish work tasks?

  • Determine the goal before planning, determining a location, and assigning roles.

• Social events are a great opportunity for getting campaign participants to contribute to necessary tasks that would otherwise take up a lot of organizers’ time (e.g. preparing petition packets).

Scheduling

• If this is a regularly occurring event, schedule a recurring event time to make it easy for people to remember and attend.

• Biweekly is a good cadence for keeping people engaged without overwhelming them.

Timing

• It’s recommended to make the event drop-in so that people don’t avoid coming if they can’t make it on time or need to leave early.

  • For a drop-in schedule, 2.5-3 hours is a solid event time frame.

• The event should be in the evenings (after 5pm) for best attendance.

• Events should not run too late, in order to be respectful to the host (8:30-9pm is a good cutoff time).

• Weekends should be avoided as people often have plans, or are out canvassing!

• Share the general timing of dinner, any programming, and announcements.

  • Determining an event schedule and communicating it out in advance is important, especially with a drop-by event. This helps ensure people don’t miss important announcements, or dinner.

Location

• Find a location that is relatively centrally located to where the campaign is happening.

• Find out who is open to hosting socials, and keep a list to rotate through.

• Find public locations (e.g. parks) that are appropriate for sizable gatherings and allow reservations.

• If the location is outside, make sure there is a nearby indoor space, covering, or backup plan in case the weather doesn’t cooperate.

Headcount

• Establishing a rough headcount in advance can be helpful, especially if food is involved or there is limited space at the event location.

  • Creating an RSVP link works well (Volunteer Sign Up link or an evite system).

• Plan on having about 25% more attendees than the number of people that sign up.

  • Assume that at least a handful of people will show up that did not RSVP for the event (don’t expect most people to sign up for a casual social event!). Take this into consideration when planning food, location, and other event details. It’s better to be over-prepared than under-prepared!