While your mission or humanitarian trip may be months away, you know that you have to start recruiting your team as early as possible. Usually that will involve conducting one or more information meetings for those interested in going on the trip. Regardless of where you are going, or the focus of your trip, there are three things that you want to communicate during your information meeting.
The first is vision. You must cast a compelling reason why someone should go on your trip. Just because you are excited about it doesn’t mean others will be! One of the best ways to cast vision is through stories. Share stories of the people’s lives where you will be working and why your trip is so important to them. Remember, names and pictures of faces are much more compelling than statistics. Also, share stories from people who have gone on trips with you before and how their lives were positively impacted.
Second, people need to leave your meeting saying to themselves, “I can do that!” It not only needs to be clear what they will be doing, but potential participants need an idea how they will fund the trip. They might be able to see themselves doing the work, but can’t figure out how they will ever come up with the money to go. So make sure that you touch on fundraising methods during the meeting.
Third, people should leave your information meeting feeling confident in you and your organization. They need to feel that they can trust their well-being to you. Everything that you do during the meeting either helps build confidence in you and your organization or it makes people leery of you. Did you hand out quality materials that looked good and were well written? Were you organized and well prepared for the meeting? Did you have solid answers for the questions that were posed? Did you keep the meeting on pace and exciting? Did you present a clear vision and strategy?
When we cast a clear vision, help people picture themselves on the trip, and instill confidence in people, then more people are inclined to sign-up for our outreach trips. Hit these three targets and your next information meeting will be a big success! In our next post we will examine some of the practical details of trip information meetings.