Excitement is brewing in cities around the globe.
Entrepreneurs and community leaders are creating events to encourage start-up businesses, inspire ideas and improve their community such as: 1 Million Cups, TEDx, Startup Weekend and Pecha Kucha.
Service clubs; such as Rotary Club, Lions Club, Kiwanis Club, etc.; have been doing the same for generations in communities worldwide, but now many are struggling with aging members and declining excitement.
There are five lessons service clubs can learn from entrepreneurial events and three that entrepreneurial events can learn from service clubs as well.
5 Lessons for Service Clubs
Freemium Attendance
“Freemium” is a business model often used online. Instead of charging for an event or service, it is free to try. There is only a charge when a user wants additional features. The music streaming Spotify is a great example. It is free to listen to music with ads, but if you want to listen without ads or on mobile devices, there is a small monthly fee.
The goal of many entrepreneurial events is not to raise money from attendees or members, but rather to gather users and grow a movement. This engaged audience can then invest in businesses and the community.
A cost to attend or join is often enough of a barrier to scare away new members and provides an easy excuse for someone to decide not to attend.
Resource mapping to improve the community at TEDxBrookings.
Purposeful Open Door Policy
At our local events, we have people whose only job is to welcome new attendees. At 1 Million Cups, we publicly welcome and introduce new members of the community to everyone else. Additionally, we build time into events for facilitated networking and conversation.
To truly have an open door policy to new attendees and members, it cannot simply be stated that guests are welcome. Instead, a conscious effort must be made to personally ask new people to attend and then introduce them to others who should meet them.
Even in our town of 20,000 people, I am amazed at how many people do not know their neighbors. A gathering for entrepreneurs or service clubs should be the place new community members can meet friends and future colleagues and begin their mayoral campaign.
Yoga on stage at TEDxBrookings
Handcrafted Experience
Too often, events are hosted in the same conference rooms with predictable food and uninspiring experiences.
More creativity is possible. If the purpose of an event or service club is to build a community, this mindset should be extended to the details of the event itself. Local and healthy food, unique meeting spaces that encourage learning, local musicians and artists and easy transportation to and from the event are all handcrafted pieces that contribute to a memorable event.
It’s easy to pay someone to cater and host an event for you. This is uninspiring and fails to showcase and support local businesses and artists.
Action-Oriented Content
Service clubs and entrepreneurial events offer content such as speakers, business pitches or TEDx presentations.
Action-oriented content works best. Speakers asking for feedback challenge audience members. It also creates connections and partnerships with the attendees that continue after the event.
As Carla Hummel, co-organizer of 1 Million Cups Yankton, noted: “1 Million Cups gets people talking and not just about the weather.”
An Accountability Stage
The goal of most events and service clubs is to make a difference in the community. The event should create the platform for change and ensure that action is taken.
The event should focus on creating a stage. That platform is not for the organization to promote itself but rather to promote the community members with an idea to share. By gathering an engaged audience, a speaker can stand up and share their big idea with the community.
At 1 Million Cups, someone with a business idea stands up on the stage and announces what they are working on. This creates immediate accountability. The community will ask them after the event how they are progressing, and they have publicly shared what they hope to achieve.
As Hummel stated: “There is no reason to talk about what needs to happen or what needs to be done if we don’t follow through on it.”
Lessons from Service Clubs
While entrepreneurial events are capturing excitement and energy, they have three lessons to learn from service clubs on achieving longevity and having an impact worldwide.
Long-Term Objectives
Service clubs create audacious goals that take long periods of time to complete. Instead of creating a quick goal such as helping launch a business, the goals are global in scale, such as Rotary’s goal of eradicating polio.
When an organization enjoys longevity and a global network of support, the goals and impact are larger. As Rob Nelson, 1 Million Cups organizer in Sioux Falls, quipped: “1 Million Cups is not curing polio, supplying wheel chairs to Romania, or water projects to Africa.”
Not yet, but with a little collaboration, there is no reason goals like this wouldn’t be possible for entrepreneurial events.
Mobilization
Membership implies obligation.
Service clubs have members they can call upon to finish long-term objectives. Events with freemium models have lots of support, but fewer champions to call upon when something needs to get done.
Building email lists and conscripting attendees for jobs such as greeters or content organizers can help build a list of attendees that could be mobilized for action when needed. Entrepreneurial events should plan ways to move attendees from freemium users to mobilized members.
Replication
The beauty of service clubs is their worldwide reach. With a standard format and clear rules and support from the international headquarters, local chapters of service clubs quickly spring up and join the international movement.
For two years, I lived and studied in Norway thanks to Rotary International and had the opportunity to visit Rotary Clubs around Norway to teach them about my home. When I lived in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, every day I passed a roundabout with a big Rotary logo with the time of their meeting.
The ability to be anywhere in the world and have a way to meet like-minded people is powerful. That is exactly what entrepreneurial events are doing on a local level. Organizations like TEDx have spread worldwide but tapping into those networks is not yet as easy for entrepreneurial events as looking at the meeting time on the roundabout sign.
Institutions Versus Start-ups
Many of the advantages and challenges of hosting events mimic the advantages and challenges of start-ups and institutions.
Start-ups can quickly respond to the desires of its members and the technology available. Experimentation is central to the experience.
Institutions may move slowly, but they create change that lasts and can be focused from all corners of the globe.
Entrepreneurial events, such as 1 Million Cups, can help service clubs make changes in their events to improve their membership and impact. Institutions, like Rotary Club, can teach entrepreneurial events how to continue their momentum and translate it into global action.
Excitement is brewing. Now its time to reflect on how that excitement can truly change our communities.
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