Tips for a Successful Activity

I’m no expert in Student Organizations, but I pride myself in having actively participated in SWE and Tau Beta Pi for the past four years. Over these years, I’ve taken a number of roles, among them, Vice President, Treasurer, Newsletter Editor and Webmaster. I’ve also been a mere active member in both societies, as well as other societies, so I’ve seen student activities from both sides, as an attendee and as organizer, on many levels. I was recently asked to go over what makes an activity or project a successful one, and I thought I’d share my answer with you.

It’s a tough question; what works for one society may not work for another. Besides, depending on the scope of the activity and the participation of the attendees, your goals and your expectations and how far it is from reality… there are a lot of factors that can affect the success of your activity. However, I’ve noticed three things most of the activities I’ve organized or attended had in common: promotion, incentives, and following-up. Neglecting any one of these key components in an activity will not necessarily result in a disastrous activity, but none of those activities I’ve attended that were deemed a success left them out.

As you plan your activities and projects for this semester, consider the following three tips. Also, if you’ve got tips you’d like to share, don’t forget to comment! Or, send them in to rcne-d@swe.org.

Promote Your Event

Simply put, you can’t expect people to come to your activity if no one knows it’s going to happen. Even if it seems obvious, you cannot expect people will attend your Annual E-week Banquet if you don’t announce it.

Promotion itself has three things to keep in mind: attract as many people as you can, through whichever medium you can, as precisely and concisely as you can.

You want to attract as much attention as possible: be colorful, chalk the sidewalks if you can; put posters everywhere. Make your posters colorful and plentiful… and the greener side of me reminds you to recycle or reuse whatever you can.

People ignore their e-mails, so don’t rely solely on a mailing list. Use Facebook, MySpace or whatever groups you have. There are still a select few students, such as die-hard seniors and naïve freshmen that read every single e-mail; make use of your mailing list. Your Corps of Officers should also spread the word of the activity. If you have a Public Relations Officer, ask her/him to get news of the event on the School Newspaper, Bulletin or even Website; if you’ve got a Webmaster, make sure they announce you event on your own website.

When promoting your event, make sure you give key details, such as the time, date and place, as well as contact information. Do not include minor details, unless they are important, such as: limited to 50 people, must RSVP by next week, formal clothing, etc. Also important: include the name of the activity. As they say in Puerto Rico, eso se cae de la mata, it’s ridiculously obvious, but I’ve received e-mails, at least once a year, telling me “DON’T MISS IT!”, inviting me to eat with professionals, and reminding me that the dress is casual, but I have no idea whatsoever as to what they’re talking about.

Provide Incentives

Everyone goes to an activity expecting to get something out of it. If there’s nothing in there for them, there’s no reason to go. So make sure you have incentives.

The classic incentive, and this rarely ever fails, is to provide food after any event. Free food will attract a lot of people who might not be interested to begin with, but you never know how many people will end up joining your section or recommending the activity (“not only was there free food, but that talk about women in engineering was inspiring!”).

Sometimes the activity is incentive enough. A Women’s Career Fair? A MatLab Seminar? If the activity itself is beneficial, sure, I’ll go. Some people will even pay to go to these things.

But what if it’s a fundraising activity? How do you get people to pay you, attend your event, and come out satisfied? How are you going to convince people that they actually need to take a break and have fun in a Karaoke Bar? If people are paying for it, make sure they get their money’s worth, for one thing. You might want to consider buying things, like gift cards, school supplies and school paraphernalia to raffle off.

Follow-up

After the event is over, you clean up the area, you say good-bye, and record it as successful. And that’s it, right? Not quite. I’ve been to a couple of activities, where I left thinking “things were better last year”. What went wrong? Last time, they didn’t document their best practices, their pitfalls, their mistakes … they didn’t document anything at all. So the next time the same organization tried the event, they were feeling their way through. There are new people in charge, they view things differently, and unless they have a guide to tell them how to do things, they’ll do things differently as well.

You also want to follow-up with the attendees. You want to thank them for coming, remind them of future activities. If anyone left something in the room, or if they didn’t get their certificates, you want to make sure they get these things. Otherwise, they’ll think you stole their jacket, promised a fake certificate, or something else. And bad-news spreads faster than good-news, so make sure you do things right.

Like I said, this isn’t set in stone. You might get a wonderful attendance even if you barely promote the event. People will come to your events without expecting anything in return. But if you’re starting out, or if you’re trying new things, these tips are definitely a starting point for your activities.