I have now spent an hour combing through the Moishe House blog, to find the goals we laid out in September, one month after moving into MH. But alas, I'm beginning to recall that technical difficulties prevented us from posting. So I'll use this time to reflect on goals that arose from a recent internal retreat we had to formally debrief our experience at the national retreat. Many of us were newly reinspired about the potential our house has in Chicago to build community and engage Jews in the city based on shared values.
We came out of the retreat with a desire to develop a mission statement for our house. We're still in the process of hammering out the exact wording, but here's what we have so far: MH Chicago aims to build a diverse, progressive, and inclusive community in an egalitarian Jewish context and is committed to working towards a more just society. The MH Chicago community organizes at least eight programs a month that focus on social justice, Jewish learning, Jewish community, and enjoying the beautiful city of Chicago.
Looking toward the future with our new articulated vision for MH Chicago, we want our programs to reflect the interests of our community and we want them to be rooted in a greater context and mission of social justice. We are hoping to implement an organizing model (heeeeey Boston!).
So for the next three months, we are planning to have one-on-one meetings with members of our community, as well as people we think might be more involved if they knew more or if the programming was different. We want to get a sense of what young Jews in Chicago expect from Moishe House.
Additionally, we want to develop strong partnerships with other organizations in the city, ranging from groups like Young Chicago Authors to the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs to 20s and 30s groups at synagogues. Our goal is to co-host/sponsor events with them.
We are meeting more regularly as a house to devise specific goals -- how many one-on-ones should each house member have each month, how many co-sponsored events do we want to have per month, etc. We are also committing ourselves to doing more specific outreach -- personal invitations to members of the community in order to increase participation. The general e-mail to the listserv just doesn't do it! We are also now on twitter and facebook -- we are embracing the cultural revolution of social networking and using it to improve our communications.
That's all for now. To sum up -- we want to deepen our relationship with our community members and work with them, and other organizations in the city, to develop programming that is meaningful and that works to bring about a more just society and that also strengthens young Jews connection to their community.
Showing posts with label outreach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outreach. Show all posts
Monday, May 3, 2010
Monday, December 7, 2009
Moishe House Outreach
How do you reach people, and particularly new people, with MH programming?
Below is a top 5 list I've developed from my experience in MH Portland.
1. Run excellent programs. Like a quality product, good programming markets itself. If you consistently churn out good events, than people will keep coming back and they will tell their friends and family about it as well. There is no better marketing tool than a quality product or service.
2. Repeat your message. People are bombarded by dozens or in many cases hundreds of messages a day. For yours to get through, they must be repeated regularly.
3. Diversify your channels. Different people like to receive communications in different ways, and by mixing up your communication channels you can both hit people multiple times without them feeling overwhelmed or annoyed. You can also create a feeling of energy and momentum by being "everywhere." At MH Portland we use an email list, a website and facebook. We haven't made use of twitter yet though we should, and there are probably many other channels that we haven't explored. We'd love advice.
4. Never interact with a young Jewish person without getting their contact information. MH is providing a great service to the community. Don't be shy about building up your list. Its critical.
5. Ask regulars to recruit new people. The best messenger is always a close friend. If you want new people to come, have those closest to them make the invite.
Obviously there are lots of ways to pursue an outreach strategy, but these are some basic lessons that we have learned and try to employ at MH Portland.
Below is a top 5 list I've developed from my experience in MH Portland.
1. Run excellent programs. Like a quality product, good programming markets itself. If you consistently churn out good events, than people will keep coming back and they will tell their friends and family about it as well. There is no better marketing tool than a quality product or service.
2. Repeat your message. People are bombarded by dozens or in many cases hundreds of messages a day. For yours to get through, they must be repeated regularly.
3. Diversify your channels. Different people like to receive communications in different ways, and by mixing up your communication channels you can both hit people multiple times without them feeling overwhelmed or annoyed. You can also create a feeling of energy and momentum by being "everywhere." At MH Portland we use an email list, a website and facebook. We haven't made use of twitter yet though we should, and there are probably many other channels that we haven't explored. We'd love advice.
4. Never interact with a young Jewish person without getting their contact information. MH is providing a great service to the community. Don't be shy about building up your list. Its critical.
5. Ask regulars to recruit new people. The best messenger is always a close friend. If you want new people to come, have those closest to them make the invite.
Obviously there are lots of ways to pursue an outreach strategy, but these are some basic lessons that we have learned and try to employ at MH Portland.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
MHSeattle, 12/6/09: Outreach
Our house has relied pretty heavily on Facebook to make people in our community aware of our events. Perhaps, at times, we've leaned too heavily on it. If we had the Moishe House experience to do over again, we might call more people personally around the time of the event to rally the troops, but also to make people feel more included and desired as members of a vibrant community.
On a related note, we'd like to thank David, Summer, and everyone at Moishe House HQ who made this a rewarding experience for us during the past couple years. We wish you all the best in the years ahead.
On a related note, we'd like to thank David, Summer, and everyone at Moishe House HQ who made this a rewarding experience for us during the past couple years. We wish you all the best in the years ahead.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Outreach in Moishe House Boston
The blog's prompt for this month asked about outreach/turn-out/recruitment to Moishe House Boston events. How do we attract new faces?
Before I became involved in the Moishe House community in Boston, I would have guessed that the best way to reach out to Bostonian Jews was through Web 2.0 technology. Send out to email lists! Post it on our Moishe House website! Announce it at local Gesher City events! Put it on Facebook.
Well, these communication forms are undoubtedly important and serve as an effective "heads-up" to the community members about upcoming events. Indeed, we send out a weekly email on Mondays that list all the upcoming events for the next two weeks, as well as maintain our own website and Google calendar so people can see for themselves what is going on.
But, in all honesty, we don't count on this technology as our major recruitment tool. Rather, we rely on good old-fashioned relationships. In our opinion, receiving one, or even two emails, isn't going to be enough to catch someone's attention, unless they are actively looking for things to do. The way we see it: everyone in our community is part of a network of relationships. The best way to get someone to an event is to have a friend ask him or her to come. (Think of the parties you go to-- or even family gatherings....it's all in the people you know). So, for any given event, we first set our goal for turn-out. Then, we ask all those involved in planning the event to identify and call a set number of people. So, for example, we have an upcoming housing justice event planned. We want to make sure that around 30 people come-- so the 7 people helping to plan it each committed to bringing 4 people. This, combined with the weekly email announcements and web advertising, has been a very successful recipe!
We also use our Shabbat dinners as a way to introduce Moishe House to new faces. Generally, our dinners need little specific turn-out effort, since, by now, word-of-mouth is enough to get a solid 50 people. So, we see Shabbat as a time to welcome new people, gauge their interest, and give them a little "taste" of our community. One way we do that is by having a "dvar tikkun" at Friday night after services-- a brief overview of a specific social justice project that someone in or allied with our community participates in. This introduces a concrete project that anyone in our community can get involved with, and perhaps more importantly, sparks conversations throughout dinner about other events/social justice intiatives/etc that we have on tap.
Finally, I would say that the most effective way to get someone to turn out to an event and stay engaged with the Moishe House community is through involving them in the planning process for the event. This is a surefire way to up the investment level, sense of ownership and pride, and feeling of community. Even giving someone a small task can increase his/her excitement level exponentially, since they now feel "part of something." I challenge you to try this within your community. I would love to hear what happens!
Happy Thanksgiving!
--Michelle, Moishe House Boston
Before I became involved in the Moishe House community in Boston, I would have guessed that the best way to reach out to Bostonian Jews was through Web 2.0 technology. Send out to email lists! Post it on our Moishe House website! Announce it at local Gesher City events! Put it on Facebook.
Well, these communication forms are undoubtedly important and serve as an effective "heads-up" to the community members about upcoming events. Indeed, we send out a weekly email on Mondays that list all the upcoming events for the next two weeks, as well as maintain our own website and Google calendar so people can see for themselves what is going on.
But, in all honesty, we don't count on this technology as our major recruitment tool. Rather, we rely on good old-fashioned relationships. In our opinion, receiving one, or even two emails, isn't going to be enough to catch someone's attention, unless they are actively looking for things to do. The way we see it: everyone in our community is part of a network of relationships. The best way to get someone to an event is to have a friend ask him or her to come. (Think of the parties you go to-- or even family gatherings....it's all in the people you know). So, for any given event, we first set our goal for turn-out. Then, we ask all those involved in planning the event to identify and call a set number of people. So, for example, we have an upcoming housing justice event planned. We want to make sure that around 30 people come-- so the 7 people helping to plan it each committed to bringing 4 people. This, combined with the weekly email announcements and web advertising, has been a very successful recipe!
We also use our Shabbat dinners as a way to introduce Moishe House to new faces. Generally, our dinners need little specific turn-out effort, since, by now, word-of-mouth is enough to get a solid 50 people. So, we see Shabbat as a time to welcome new people, gauge their interest, and give them a little "taste" of our community. One way we do that is by having a "dvar tikkun" at Friday night after services-- a brief overview of a specific social justice project that someone in or allied with our community participates in. This introduces a concrete project that anyone in our community can get involved with, and perhaps more importantly, sparks conversations throughout dinner about other events/social justice intiatives/etc that we have on tap.
Finally, I would say that the most effective way to get someone to turn out to an event and stay engaged with the Moishe House community is through involving them in the planning process for the event. This is a surefire way to up the investment level, sense of ownership and pride, and feeling of community. Even giving someone a small task can increase his/her excitement level exponentially, since they now feel "part of something." I challenge you to try this within your community. I would love to hear what happens!
Happy Thanksgiving!
--Michelle, Moishe House Boston
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