Member participation
Hi Everyone,
I hope everyone is enjoying the last few weeks of the school year!
Two weeks ago we had our annual one day symposium, with Fritz Wood as our speaker. We had an adequate turnout, not nearly as good as last year's, but what was most disappointing was the number of our VBMA members who signed up to attend the event and failed to show-up. We had between 30-40 members sign-up to attend and less than 10 actually showed up for the event. My question is this, have any of you had any success in getting your members to attend these type of events? This same thing happened at our symposium last year and it is rather frustrating when you spend the money to buy food and prepare other materials for them and then the fail to show-up.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Jason
Hey Jason, I just had an
Hey Jason,
I just had an Etiquette Dinner at Cornell, and it was really expensive to put on (>$50/person). I had funding from a the office of graduate students here at our school, so it wasn't going to cost the club much out of pocket, so I decided to make it free for members. The event was $20 for non-members, so I ended up charging members $20 as a deposit to ensure they came (plus it made it easy to just get $20 from everyone!). This worked really well, since only one person cancelled day of the event, and the few that cancelled before, I was able to fill their spots at a discounted price (since the person didn't order their own food) and keep the original person's deposit. The deposit system really worked because the members knew they were going to get their money back, so it made it easier to give me the money in the first place (I had to hunt down non-members to get them to pay), plus it gave them an incentive to just not show up because they were busy.
Since this is more of a symposium, could you have a small fee ($5-$10) and give back the money to members (and non-members if this is an event you don't charge anyone for) after the fact?
Ilyssa Meren
VBMA Chapter President
Cornell University
College of Veterinary Medicine
Class of 2013