Social Marketing: Professional Outreach
Activity 2
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Community Organization Planning & Awareness Meeting
Overview:
- This meeting was planned to get the community involved in Awareness Day. We created a distribution list by using email addresses from one of our community organization business card file and sent out notices.
- We outlined what they were to expect by attending this meeting and provided lunch (pizza, chicken wings, salad and beverage).
- We assured the attendees that the meeting would start on time and end on time – which we did. During refreshments, we confirmed registration of those who RSVP verses those who actually attended (see RSVP List) -- also see email sent to community about this meeting -->(View Email letter) -- see the actual invitation that was distributed to the community (View Community Invitation) and lastly the survey created to evaluate participants reaction to the meeting (View Community Survey).
Lesson learned:
- Those agencies that attended were completely unaware of a countywide event to raise awareness for children’s mental health; they were unaware of our anti-stigma campaign sponsored by Action for Mental Health; and Green Ribbon Day (Bookmarks) sponsored by Mental Health Association. Therefore, our three agencies collaborated to sponsor this awareness meeting to educate the community.
- Some of the activities overwhelmed the community and information they gathered at this meeting and immediately filled out the survey sheet (attached) to sign-up for responsibility and provide support. Based on the categories they signed up for, we distributed the survey between our three agencies and made follow-up calls. We had 51 people that RSVP and 104 people who actually attended the meeting from 64 agencies. Out of this, 15 agencies supported us after the presentation and wanted to be involved – they filled-out the short Survey attached.
- You work in this field and believe that everyone automatically know who you are, your agency and what you do. We make assumptions and this meeting proved that more of our community wanted to be involved but did not know how they could be involved or who to contact. This was a great forum to inform the community.
- Make sure you stay on time. Each agency staff have a set amount of time and when they attend meetings they need to know they will get everything they need while at the meeting rather than having to leave early because the presenter did not stay on schedule. By confirming with the audience that we would end on time people were impressed and relieved when I said “well, there are 5 minutes reminding, are there any other questions, because I promised we’d be finished at 2pm.”
- The same format used last year we used again in 2008. Those who attended remembered that the presenter valued there time and believed in starting the meeting as scheduled. They came back for the meeting scheduled in 2008 and a few mentioned this small point to us.
- Always have a little survey to measure audience receptiveness to your activity. It helps to make improvements the next time. Surveys are Great tool and do not need to be anything fancy! We work with our evaluation team to create little useful surveys for most of our activities.