It's easy to fill your schedules with speaking engagements. In every community there are all sorts of organizations seeking luncheon and dinner speakers - eager program committee chairs are always searching for interesting topics to offer at a monthly meeting. Your challenge is to accept or elicit only the most fruitful speaking engagements that have potential to lead you to the volunteers you want to recruit.
Do your homework! Be sure you know who will be in your audience and why you are there. Remember, you won't find African-American men at a Swedish women's club!
There are two types of groups to which you can speak: organized groups and random or "unaffiliated" groups.
Organized groups include faith communities, civic clubs, professional societies, and special interest groups such as horticulture clubs. All of these groups share the following characteristics:
- They are made up of members - people who joined the group to be with peers and friends and for whom the meetings, and therefore the speakers, are simply an interesting aspect of group involvement. These organization or club members may not be looking for additional volunteering to do. Be careful that you are not just this week's nice luncheon speaker.
- They have their own recruitment needs to find new members and to encourage current members to become more active. Your recruitment needs may, in fact, conflict with theirs.
- They may be approached numerous times throughout the year by recruiters such as yourself and therefore have developed creative ways of saying "no" to requests for help.
- They will respond to project ideas that serve their needs while also serving the needs of others. So if you want to get an organized group to help you, figure out how to engage them as a group (even though individual members are always free to become interested in volunteering for you as well).
Random groups can be found where a group of people are gathered, have time to listen, share some common interest that brought them together, but are "unaffiliated" with each other beyond that particular event. Examples of random groups are participants in a workshop or conference, students in a classroom, visitors at an open house, or people attending a lecture, film, or sporting event. For volunteer recruitment purposes, the "unaffiliated" group may hold more potential than the organized group because the characteristics are flipped around:
- Listeners are not necessarily already committed to something as a member or volunteer and therefore might be open to hearing about their opportunities to become involved.
- If you have targeted the right event, you are speaking to people who share an interest in the topic under consideration that day. So if you speak at an animal rights conference about volunteering with the Humane Society, there is a logic to your approach.
When you've determined where you will do your presentation, ask some important logistical questions:
- Exactly how much time will you have? Where will you fit on the agenda? What will happen before and after you speak?
- What will the room be like? Should you expect a dark, formal auditorium? a bright, noisy lunchroom?
- Where will you speak? Will you have a podium? be on a stage?
- Will you have access to a microphone? To an overhead projector or slide projector (or any other audiovisual equipment you may need to bring if it is not available on site)?
- Will there be a table on which you can display anything? Can someone help to distribute handout materials (hint: always have something for people to take away that has your contact information on it!)?
- Is there some place you can stay behind and meet with interested people after the meeting?
Most groups are happy to accommodate your needs as a speaker if you specify them in advance. The time it takes to discuss the questions listed above will be very well spent in your increased preparation and comfort level.