YD Organizing 7/15/2010

By Mr. Lucky

Before we start I just wanted to mention that this new segment is going to be different from the Electoral Fortune articles that I usually write. Instead of focusing on the news or other political matters, YD Organizing will focus on ideas for how to run a chapter of the Young Democrats in order to get the best results. Since I am a member of a college chapter the focus will mostly be on issue specific to college chapters.

Anyways, let’s move on to the importance of showmanship in hosting meetings as a college chapter leader. This is one area where I feel leaders can really improve on once the focus on it. Often I have seen the room filled up with more than 100 people at the first YD meeting of a new semester, when many new freshmen and other students are looking for a new group to be apart of, but in recent years there are a few more than 20 individuals that show up to the next meeting and that includes members that have been around for years. In my opinion one of the ways that this high drop off rate can be fixed is by making sure that the meetings are more enjoyable to attend. It’s only logical to assume that the reason that someone who came to the first meeting doesn’t attend the second is because the meeting wasn’t enjoyable.

I think that all chapter leaders should take feed back and look for ways themselves to improve meeting quality. Some suggestions that I have heard for years but have never been tried include keeping meetings short. By short I mean less than an hour, because it’s hard to listen to someone monologue for that long, especially so for people at their first meeting. Another suggestion is to filter the speakers that attend so that the super wonkish types aren’t speaking to the room on the first day. It’s all about thinking about the meeting you are leading as a performance and you need to entertain the audience.  Hopefully taking this approach will help chapter leaders improve their retention in the upcoming school year.