Growing Your Astronomy Club |
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3. Set Up a Welcome System
Establishing a procedure to greet visitors to your club meetings increases the odds the visitor will decide to become a member.
Here are tips for setting up a simple structure to get your club ready to greet visitors and make them feel welcome.
You might be thinking, “All club members are responsible for greeting visitors, right?” Maybe so, but what often happens is that members are distracted talking to their friends and a visitor walking in will go unnoticed. It happens all too often that “Nobody even said hello to me.”
Here are the steps astronomy clubs have taken to assure that visitors have a pleasant experience.
a. Recruit a Greeting Team
This team is responsible for greeting everyone coming through the door. Your club might have a “Greeting Coordinator” who recruits greeters, provides training to new greeters, and assures the Welcome Table is stocked.
b. Welcome Table
Have a table at the entrance to your meeting that is staffed by a least two greeters and stocked with information about your club.
It can also be a place where visitors can leave their contact information. Have stick-on name tags available for people not wearing a name badge.
Some clubs will give away a small gift for those who visit the table. It’s a great way to put back issues of magazines to good use.
Keep a Welcome Table supply box that might contain:
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Club info sheets / Welcome Packets
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Sign-in sheets & pens
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Event fliers
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Copies of the club newsletter
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General Meeting Agenda
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Stick-on Name tags
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Marking pens
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Welcome gifts like mugs, pens, stickers or back issues of magazines
c. Club Welcome Packet
You know your local club context, so use what is appropriate. These are compiled suggestions of what other clubs have found to be useful to a visitor.
Club Information (could just be a single sheet of paper):
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General information on the club’s programs, events, and benefits of membership
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How to get more information (club website, calendar, and/or contact person)
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How to apply for membership, including dues information
TIP: The visitor is more likely to save your Club Information sheet if you print an interesting star map on the back. Night Sky Network offers several star map options:
http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/download-list.cfm?SearchString=star%20map
Optional items:
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Letter of Greeting from the President.
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A brief history of the club.
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List of club committees and special interest groups and who to contact.
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A small gift like a club patch, refrigerator magnet, or NASA bookmark
What NOT to include in a Welcome Packet:
Full club roster with names, emails, phone numbers. Unless every member has given permission to be publicized this way, this could be considered a privacy issue, especially if the person receiving the packet is not yet a member.
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Sharing the Universe videos are produced by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) from research conducted by the Institute for Learning Innovation, the ASP, and from astronomy clubs like yours. www.astrosociety.org/SharingTheUniverse
The Sharing the Universe project is funded by the National
Science Foundation and is supported by the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) of the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DRL 0638873. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in the material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Video production by Flying Moose Pictures