4 Steps to Increase Meeting Attendance

At this stage in the semester, you have at least a small group of people interested in learning more about Objectivism. You may already be meeting regularly and have chosen all of the details of when, where, and how often to meet. Follow these 4 steps to help increase attendance at your meetings and make all of your hard work more worthwhile.

1. Weekly club meetings: With weekly club meetings it's easier to become a part of people's regular schedules; it's easier to schedule other activities around it. Anything less frequent is not routine and easily forgotten. For example, if meetings are every other week and a member misses 1 meeting there is now a month gap between club events. Feeling overwhelmed about organizing a weekly meeting? Contact us! You shouldn't be spending much time at all preparing for meetings. 
2. Timing is everything: Time your meetings so that you can all go to dinner after. At dinner, members get a chance to get to know each other and can even continue interesting discussions from the meetings at dinner! Tues and Wed are the best days for weekly meetings because people are not yet overwhelmed by all of their homework and other social commitments and these days are least likely to interfere with routine holiday weekends.
3. Choose topics selfishly: Choose discussion topics that are interesting to you personally, but are fundamental enough to be relevant to others (we'll send examples in a future email). By picking topics of personal interest your enthusiasm for the topic will show and will be contagious. 
4. Do not require preparation: Do not require or expect people to read anything in advance of the meeting, instead, pick a brief passage from Ayn Rand's fiction or a short essay by Ayn Rand and read it aloud as a group. Lead the discussion and raise interesting questions along the way, but don't make the mistake of thinking you need to finish the essay. Remember, the goal is to stimulate intellectual discussion, it's okay if you only get through a few pages.

Remember, if attendance at your club meetings is low or intellectual discussions are difficult to get going, don't be frustrated. Don't make the mistake of thinking "people at my campus are too busy," or "there aren't enough others interested in Objectivism." You'll be amazed at how little changes to meetings can make a big difference! We'll cover these in future emails.

Do you have your own tips you've found to be successful? Add a comment at the bottom of this post to let others know. (Click the title of this post to view it on the website first.) 

This email had contributions from Travis P and Colleen S, both former presidents of the University of Chicago club.

[Edited 11/23/08 to clarify point #4]

Comments

[Yuen Liang]

I disagree with #4, Club meetings, like any other type of meeting, are much more productive if you have people come prepared. In fact, it's an easy way to weed out the wheat from the chaff when you expect people to prepare. If you find yourself stretched for time, you don't have to prepare much, even just 10-15 minutes of prep as a club leader can have a significant benefit on the overall meeting.

Also, I had the privilege of studying under more experienced Objectivists and the fact that they prepared for their meeting placed an implicit pressure on me as a member to prepare myself.

[Colleen Smith]

Travis and I also disagree with number 4 and it was not our point. A small amount of preparation can greatly enhance meetings. We wanted to emphasize that there may be times when the need for preparation should be avoided or it should be kept to a minimum - like right before finals week. You can plan for these meetings to be light or no study for members by using videos or tapes. However, as a club leader, any time that I led a discussion I always did some preparation and found it to be very beneficial.

As always, you should consider your own situation and who your members are when making decisions regarding preparation for meetings.