October is just around the corner and is the perfect time to breathe new life into your Toastmasters club by hosting a spooktacular, Halloween or Harvest Home-themed open house. Open houses are fantastic tools for attracting new members, but a standard meeting can sometimes feel intimidating to fresh guests. By leaning into the playful, or light eerie magic of the autumn season, you can lower the stakes, show off your club’s vibrant personality, and turn a regular meeting into an unforgettable community event. To keep your event, light, fun, and inviting to visitors to participate and join your club, keep the tone light, fun Halloween themes like from Ghosts or The Ghost and Molly McGee, rather than the very dark and terrifying Hellraiser series.
In this series, we will explore how to weave festive themes throughout your entire meeting agenda, starting today with the roles that set the tone right from the opening gavel. These first few entries will focus on deciding on your meeting event theme and promoting it.
Start with your executive committee meeting and deciding on which meeting date and the specific theme for your event. Then, invite your VPPR and interested member helpers to design the meeting flyer. You can use a Toastmasters branded flyer or Canva. Be sure to cite your VPM’s contact information, your meeting location, and QR code on your flyer.
Canva Resources: https://www.foundersdistrict.org/2023/11/24/canva-resources/
Then start inviting people! 3 ideas for where to find new people to invite to your club’s Halloween fun celebration meeting.
Print about 10-25 copies of the flyer and bring to your next club meeting. Have them available at the Registration and Greeting area of you meeting and pass them out to members to each take a few during your meeting’s Announcements section.
- Coffee Shop: Post at the community announcement bulletin board of a nearby Starbucks or other coffee shop. Bring a thumbtack with you. Return weekly to replace the flyer that may have disappeared since you posted it.
- Community or Laundry Room in your apartment complex: Post the flyer in a public area of your living complex. If permitted, post one on the outside of your apartment home door.
- LinkedIn Post: Take a selfie of you smiling and holding the flyer. Share the information for the meeting in your post and ask a question to increase engagement. Try something like, “How does your office decorate for Halloween?” Pro Tip: make a different related selfie post once a week until the event. People need to see something multiple times for best effectiveness.
Start planning planning how your club will celebrate Halloween or Harvest-Home and use that to invite guests for a different reason than maybe you have in the past..