... Encourage members to host house parties in support of a particular issue

Your organization wants supporters to host house parties – maybe to complement a landing page or effort (DFA did this with their minimum wage campaign). You want supporters to be able to search for their closest event, or host their own.

Setting Up the Calendar

To allow your supporters to host their own house parties, you can use ControlShift’s calendars tools. To get started, create a new calendar. You’ll have a few options when creating the calendar, so you’ll want to consider:

• Do you want to provide default text for events? You can pre-fill the description, date, or time, etc. Event creators will be able to edit this default text when creating their event, but adding default text will allow you to show the type of events you’d like people to create.
  
  
• Do you want to allow hosts to hide the event address? Because these house parties will be taking place at private residences, hosts may prefer to hide their exact address until people RSVP. If you’d like to provide that option, click to “Allow Hiding Event Address.” When the address is hidden, the event won’t show up as a pin on the map, but a fuzzier spot.
  
  
• Do you want to skip moderation? By default events will need to be set to good or above in order to appear on the calendar. If you don’t want to moderate each new event, you can click to “set all events to good on creation.”
  
  
• Do you want to collect hosts’ mailing addresses? If you need to send materials to the hosts – informational packets, booklets, movies, etc. – you can ask for the hosts’ mailing addresses. 

Recruiting Hosts

Once you’ve created the calendar, you need to recruit event hosts. To recruit hosts, consider using your CRM to send an email to your most committed supporters directing them to the calendar hub page. If these house parties are related to an ongoing campaign, use your CRM to send this email to the campaign leaders.

Publicize the Calendar

 After events have been created, send an email to your existing list directing them to the calendar hub page. From the hub page they can find and RSVP to their local event. We’ll automatically send emails to the host and attendees immediately after they RSVP. Additionally, we’ll send them a reminder before the event. You can customize these emails if you’d like.

After the events have passed, you may want to collect feedback from event hosts about what would have made hosting the house parties better.