Section 3 | Meeting Attendance

Maintaining meeting attendance is yet another function of your group that is critical to success and survival. More strategies for holding meetings and types of meetings will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. Don't get discouraged if your first meetings are small. Stick with it and try the ideas in this section and your group will grow.

Have Regular Meetings

You can't expect people to show up if you don't have regular meetings (same time, same place,

ideally every week). This is a critical factor in meeting attendance. Regular meetings establish a routine for your members to plan around and increases interest in the group as members build relationships. Once your members get in the habit of showing up at a certain place and time they'll be inclined to keep doing it. They'll look forward to seeing each other and get more engaged with group activities. A stumbling block is trying to find a time that works for everyone. Sometimes you can get people to respond to an email or poll, but often you just have to pick a time that seems like it will work. Once you have multiple people complaining that they can't make it to the meetings, then you have enough interest to ask around for times that might work better. If you are going to make a change, it is usually best to switch meeting times between semesters so that everyone can plan the new time along with their new class schedule.

Advertise for Meetings

Think of everything you would do to advertise a big speaker: your strategies may include flyering, chalking, posting events online, sending reminder messages to your email list, and asking members to bring friends. Are you doing the same thing for your meetings? Advertising meetings has two great results. It (1) attracts new, interested, potential members to your group, and (2) reminds current members where and when they should show up. You don't have to wallpaper your campus - a handful of bright, clever, attention-grabbing flyers in high-traffic areas and places of particular interest (a hip coffee shop, the science and philosophy departments, etc.) should do the trick. Save yourself some time!

Since your meetings should be the same time and place every week, design your flyers so that you can leave them up all semester. Then you just have to replace the ones that get covered, worn, lost or stolen!

Include Activities

Your meetings are a great time to plan big events, design T-shirts and flyers, and take care of the business of running a group. But if all you're doing is taking care of business, the rest of your members will stop coming. Save some business for officer meetings. On the other hand, don't feel as though you can't have any business items on your agenda! Your meetings are a great time to do brainstorming, get feedback, and ask for volunteers. Just make sure that —getting things done— is not all you're doing. The key is to have activities at each meeting that people are interested, engaged and/or entertained by. There are lots of ideas out there, so get creative and get going! Your members may have suggestions - listen to them and take their ideas seriously.

Provide Snacks

Food goes a long way for college students - especially if it's mentioned on your advertising. You don't have to go wild and buy pizza for every meeting - a bag of chips or package of cookies should be plenty. Some leaders complain that they don't want to bribe people to come to their meetings; consider providing snacks a perk that makes your meetings more worthwhile. Other leaders think that people will show up just for food. While someone might freeload at a meeting that promises free pizza, it's highly unlikely that they'll come to a meeting just for potato chips. Always make sure that your meeting location is okay with food. The last thing you want is to create a bad reputation for your group by getting in trouble! Once you get to know your group a little better, you will know what they like and what allergies / needs to plan for.

Be Respectful of Your Members' Time

College students have a lot of things to do. Be respectful of this fact when running your meetings. If the posted meeting time is 8 p.m., start at 8. Yes, a few latecomers may miss the beginning of your meeting, but so what? If you advertise 90-minute meetings, don't drag on for two hours. Normal meetings shouldn't last longer than 90 minutes. If you're watching a film, don't interrupt, but on film night make sure to have little else on your agenda and to start on time. Be sure to announce when the formal meeting is over so that people don't feel obligated to stay when they have other things to do. This doesn't mean that you have to kick people out - a huge aspect of any secular group is the community it fosters, and post-meeting gatherings are a great way to build those relationships.

Get Feedback

Once you start getting people to come to meetings, solicit some feedback from them. Try to find out why they came, what they liked and didn't like. What would they like to see more of? Try passing out paper surveys, a clipboard with a question at the top that people can respond to, or other creative ideas. Once you have that information, use it! If comedy film night was a total flop, don't keep doing them. If everyone liked having the biology professor come speak, try to find another speaker to bring in.

Foster Your Group Outside of Meetings

You can increase attendance at meetings by fostering interest in the group outside of meetings. Does your group have a web forum, Facebook page, discussion listserv, or other method of communication? If not, you're missing a valuable tool for your group. Go start one up! Post interesting videos and articles, posts from your favorite atheist blogs, secular news, and info about secular events in the community that your members can get involved in.

You probably only need a few items a week, but an active, engaged group might send out several items a day. You may even want to assign an officer the formal role of moderator of the list to keep discussion moving. These tidbits remind people between meetings that your group exists and that there's plenty of reason to stay involved. The more active a group is, the more likely people are to become engaged, and this is an easy way to show your group's activity level.