Mary Grace Ketner. How do you build to your membership in your storytelling guild?
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Press Play to listen to Applied Storytelling #007 – Building the Membership of Your Storytelling Guild or read the transcript below… | |
Mary Grace, that is great question. This is a good example of how we in the storytelling community – we think that our problems are unique to us. I am not saying that you think that. But I am saying that many people in storytelling community and many storytellers think that they have to reinvent the wheel, that storytelling clubs or organizations are complete unique in terms of arts centered organizations.
I think the most important part of my answer is to be clear what the purpose of your club or guild is… Some clubs or guilds are designed to support artists in creating their art form. Some clubs or art center organizations are designed to help spread in the public realm their art form. And some art organizations are designed to advocate for their art form. It depends on what your goals are. I am going to assume that you are a small group of people who love the art form and you are open to both professionals and non-professionals and are basically interested in growing in size.
The example to follow is what you will see Churches doing all the time. Churches are constantly looking for new members.
1st; they have regular hours. So you know that on Sunday from 10 to 12 just about anywhere in America at a Church there will be something going on. Secondly, you know that if you walk in the door between 10 to 12 or usually between 10 o’clock and 10:20, there will be a greeter at the door greeting you and ask you your name and give you your name tag, telling you about the Church, asking you why you were there, where you heard about it. You also know that Church will be listed in the local Yellow pages. You can easily locate it if you need to. It probably has a website. And in addition when you walk in the door, they ask you what your interests are and they try to help you to find or meet people who have similar interests. This is an important part of getting a new membership. Because it is not just about getting new people to walk in the door, it is also about getting the people who arrive at the door to stick to the organization. And this actually is the part most organizations are weak at. If they are not good at getting the people to come back, the second or third time what s the point?
You need to get an email address from everyone who walks in the door. You have someone in the group who is emailing everybody before a meeting and you have a written agenda that is in that email.
One of the things that I have seen in groups that is very destructive to people coming back is business is not capped. What I mean by that is that, say you have 2 hours of meeting time, you deal with the business first to get out of the way and there is no cap on the meeting like we are going to deal with business for exactly 30 minutes and what we do not touch on we are going to stop and then we will tell stories for an hour and a half. Otherwise what happens is you end up using an hour of business because a group will always use the time you give it. Business will always take as much time as you gave it. Because believe me everyone has got opinions. And if everyone knows that they only have half hour to discuss this particular topic, people will be much more efficient. If they know they have an hour, they will be much less efficient. Another reason groups sometimes drive members away is that the group is not clear and is in conflict because you have people in the group who are there to socialize and you have people in the group who are there to listen and you have people in the group who are there to tell.
If you are clear that your group is about telling and that is the primary purpose. So you are going to do the telling first and leave the last 20 minutes for business or announcements or whatever. Then that is you need to get right down to it. If that is the business of that group then make it the business of the group. If the business of the group is to get together and talk about the gigs you did, about storytelling and talk to each other about being friends that is awesome. But make that the business there, make that the time the focus is what you are doing. Okay we are going to spend 30 minutes just telling.
But back to your original question? What I hear you saying as part of your question is… How do I get new people to show up?
You can form a partnership. You have a storytelling group. They love to perform. Find another organization, arts organization, a theatre organization that needs to raise money. Offer to a fund raiser for them. Go into that fundraiser and do some good material by the way to actually have some process for selecting the best stories in the group. Go in, do that fundraiser for that organization and during that fund raiser, tell them about your regular meeting times, right. Regular every 2 weeks, every week, every month, whatever it is. Regular meeting times, spectacular performance, collect their email addresses from potential future members at that event. If you do that 3 or 4 times a year, you will have new people flowing to you. Just coming in the doors saying, “Hey I saw you perform, I want to learn to do what you are doing”. Partnerships are great way of getting audiences. Partnerships are a great way of growing memberships.
You can also just send out press releases. I am not saying send press releases to just news organizations – send them to everywhere on earth you can find – Parents’ Organizations and Senior Centers. Basically inviting individuals of these organizations to come to your meetings. Have a thematic meeting or group will get together on this state to talk about this theme. We think it will be a great interest to your group. It is work. And again that is the core problem that happens in the storytelling groups is that many people come there to get away, not to work some more. And you really do have to not complain about it, because is the nature of groups. Someone has to pull the weight. Someone has to be willing to do the work of sending out the material and inviting people to attend. Step up to the plate – be that person and make things happen.
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