How to Host a Campus Progress Speaking Event
At Campus Progress, our speakers bureau connects colleges and universities with prominent speakers for speeches, debates, symposia, film showings, and more. Our goal is to stimulate discussion about current issues and generate publicity and interest in the work of progressive students and groups. We’re very glad to work with you as you prepare to host a Campus Progress Speakers Bureau event. We appreciate your support as we work to strengthen and empower progressive voices on campuses nationwide.
We have prepared this package to assist you in hosting an event. We are confident that you are more than capable of planning a successful campus event, but we hope that you will find our suggestions on how to execute a speaking program helpful.
Planning
You are the principal organization hosting this event on your campus. Please make sure you have chosen the best location, organized your methods of publicity, and developed the event format.
Date
When choosing a date, be sure to check your school’s calendar for holidays, breaks and university events that might conflict with your event. We suggest that you host your event during the evening to avoid conflicting with a majority of students’ classes.
Location
If you have not secured a venue, do that immediately. Pick the location very carefully. You want to make sure that it’s in a central location on campus and accessible to all students. You can never be sure exactly how many people will attend, therefore err on the low side in picking a room. We would rather have too many people in a small room than have too few people in a big room. If you can, reserve two rooms of different sizes so you can decide which one to use once you see how much buzz the event generates.
Publicity
This is probably the most important part of hosting the event. You want to make sure that you cover all of your bases to ensure that as many students and organizations as possible are aware of your event. There’s nothing more nerve-wracking than to have a dynamic speaker, but no one in the audience!
You should create flyers and posters that can go up in high traffic areas of your campus, such as the student union, residential halls, cafeteria, library and other highly frequented places. Your flyer should include the title, the speaker, location, time and date, co-sponsoring organization, plus a mention of the all-important free food, if you are providing refreshments.
Here are two examples of effective flyers:
You should also contact your school newspaper and other campus publications. If you can, place an advertisement or announcement in the paper or request a reporter to cover the event and interview the speaker, members of your organization, and guests. Also, contact the local media and provide them with your press release. The subject matter may be about a controversial topic, and someone might want to cover it.
Most campuses send announcements via email. Contact the office responsible for mass mailings and have emails sent to all students, faculty and staff. Utilize listservs and your friends – never underestimate the persuasive power of a little pleading.
Also, creating bulletins and event invites on popular sites such as facebook.com and myspace.com can help with informing friends and others in your community that may not be in direct contact with your campus.
Be sure to notify relevant academic departments and programs. A professor who is willing to give extra credit or require his or her class to attend your event will definitely increase attendance.
You are the lead organization for this event; however, as noted, you’ll often decrease your burden and workload if you reach out to other organizations and departments about the possibility of co-sponsoring. This can increase your audience size and help you spread the word.
Food
As we all know, free food brings students. Please assess your budget and determine if you have enough money to purchase pizza, drinks, or other refreshments for the guests. If not, please contact us and we can discuss providing some reimbursement for refreshments.
Speaker logistics
We will send you your speakers’ travel itinerary and contact information closer to the date. Designate someone to take him or her to and from the airport or train station. Make sure the speaker gets to his/ her place of lodging. Orient your speaker to the campus. Arrange to escort him or her to the event or make sure he or she knows how to get there.
Event specifics
Be sure that the amplification system (microphones and speakers) are working before the event.
If the crowd is sparse, head out of the room and pull people in – physically if you must. Mention food!
We will be sending you Campus Progress literature and a sign-in sheet. Please set up a table and/or an aggressive hawker to distribute the literature and get people to sign the sheet. After the event, please return the sign-in sheets – by snail mail to the address below, by scanning them or retyping them and emailing them to the email address below, or by faxing them to the number below- so we can get in touch with more students. You can also download a copy of the sign-in sheet here.
Someone – a student or faculty or staff member – should prepare an introduction and introduce your speaker at the event and provide some information about his / her background. The introducer or someone else should help moderate the question and answer period. Don’t leave your speaker hanging at the end of his or her talk – get up there and get the Q & A going. Prepare a couple of questions in advance to get the ball rolling and keep momentum– often people are hesitant to ask the first question. When you reach the designated ending time of the event, call for the last question. Better to shut it down than to have the audience slowly trickle out. If there is interest, and your speaker is willing, he or she can take additional questions informally after the event ends.
Follow Up
Campusprogress.org loves to post coverage of our events. Therefore we would like for you to contact your campus photographer, or take some digital pictures yourself, and send pictures to us at cpwebmaster@campusprogress.org. We also suggest that you have a member of your organization file a brief report on the community / blog page. As we get closer to the event we will FedEx you Campus Progress literature that we would like distributed. The package will include our one-pager, postcards and an event sign in sheet.
Some of our staff may also be attending the event; we’ll let you know if we’re coming to your campus.
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us:
speakers@campusprogress.org
Good luck and thank you for contacting Campus Progress!
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