Events are a key part of a successful One for the World semester. They strengthen the presence of your chapter on campus, spark interest in potential new members, build community among your existing members, offer your chapter something tangible to organize around, help educate people about effective giving, and can be a good setting in which to get people to take the pledge.
But what events should you run? How should you run them? When and where should they take place? In this article you will find general advice for running events, along with links to more curated guidance and resources for each specific event.
Contents:
Event Strategy
Events play a specific role in your chapter strategy and occupy a particular place in your chapter's semester timeline. They should occur during the outreach phase in the middle of your term, between your onboarding and recruitment phase and your closing phase, when Pledge Week will occur.
While different types of events have different goals, in the broadest terms the primary purpose of events is twofold:
- Externally, they give you a straightforward mode of engaging potential pledgers and educating them about One for the World and effective giving. Importantly, events typically serve as the 'mouth of the funnel' for your pledge journey -- a first point of engagement for people to learn what One for the World is, after which you can further engage them with more interactive and educational programming, before following up with an ask to take the pledge.
- Internally, events give you an easy organizing ask for your members. Especially if they are new to the chapter, members can be overwhelmed by the complexity presented by One for the World: there's a lot of content to take in, and the idea of pitching the pledge to their networks can be intimidating. Events, on the other hand, are straightforward to run; offer diverse ways for members to contribute; and crucially give your members an easy first ask to make of their friends. Rather than starting with talking about the pledge, members can simply open up a semester-long conversation about One for the World by inviting their friends to an event. This will give them a base to build on throughout the term, eventually culminating in an ask to pledge during Pledge Week.
Importantly, events also have some limitations that are worth considering:
- They can take a lot of capacity to run. Larger events in particular can take a lot of energy to plan, advertise, and execute, so you should carefully consider your chapter's capacity when planning events for the term. In general, be wary of running more than two or three large events during a given semester.
- Other than Giving Lunches, they generally aren't conducive to short-term returns. Generally, the purpose of events is not to get dozens of pledges. You can get pledges at events if you have a clear plan to do so: assigning members to pitch people who leave the event, and having two or three members nearby at a pledge station with Donational open on their laptops, is an effective way to do so. But in general they function better as a mouth-of-the-funnel mechanism than a closing mechanism.
Event Best Practices
Bigger events are great for increasing OFTW recognition, building a brand on your campus, and serving as the mouth of the funnel for your pledge pipeline. Smaller events, like Giving Lunches, offer a chance to engage people more robustly and individually. The former typically serve as a point of entry into your pledge pipeline and take place earlier in your outreach phase, while the latter should take place later in the term and serve to move people closer to the point where they're ready to pledge. Find best practices below.
Before the event
- Set goals for the event
- How many attendees do you want to have at the event? If you are planning to get pledges, how many pledges will you get? Discuss and set these goals with your team prior to the event.
- Draw up content for the event
- Depending on the event type, you may need to create a deck, recruit a speaker, or otherwise draw up a run of show. See various guides below.
- Reserve a space on campus at least two weeks ahead of the event.
- Make sure the space is easily accessible for all potential attendees and has video presentation capabilities. Historically, chapters have aimed for a room with a 50+ person capacity, but you should aim for more attendees in order to create an exciting atmosphere!
- Organize marketing collateral
- Make sure you have an I GIVE ONE % sign and other OFTW-branded physical marketing material.
- Print any handouts, including QR codes or shortened links with calls to action, in advance (see below under 'During the event' for suggested content).
- Advertise as much as possible!
- This is critical! It can be very dispiriting to organize an event and have only a handful of people show up (not to mention being very inefficient).
- Ensure all of your members bring one or two friends to the event.
- Make flyers with Canva and post them around campus.
- Post the event to social media and have all members reshare e.g., to their stories on Instagram.
- Send event information to your mailing list and any mailing lists you have access too at least a week ahead of the event, with a reminder two or three days before the event.
- Seek other clubs on campus that can cross-promote, aiming for ones that may have potential pledgers - business clubs, economics clubs, social impact clubs, global health clubs etc..
During the event
- Have a few laptops ready at the entrance with the following pages ready:
- Google Form or physical signup sheet to be added to your mailing list. Find templates here.
- Your Donational Page in case people want to take the pledge.
- You can also have printed QR codes that go straight to your Donational page, so that multiple people can checkout on their phones at once.
- Bring marketing collateral
- Set up your I GIVE ONE % sign and other OFTW marketing materials.
- Set up your sign outside the entrance to the room.
- Bring handouts, which could include application links for any recruiting your chapter is doing, contact information for your club, ways to get more involved, or a summary of OFTW and its mission.
- Capture media during the event
- Make sure someone is in charge of taking pictures and videos so they can be posted on your social media accounts.
After the event
- Follow up with attendees
- Follow up with everyone who attends with ways they can become involved with your club: coming to your next event; taking the pledge; or applying to become a Student Ambassador or Executive Board member. An event without follow up is almost certainly a waste of time!
- Debrief with your team
- At your next e-board meeting, discuss how the event went relative to your goals and expectations. Did you reach your turnout target? How might the event be made more engaging or more effective in the future? These debriefs are a good way to get your board more engaged -- those who offer useful feedback can be tapped to run an event in the future.
