Gaining Interest

Living in a large village in North Kent, you can imagine the place is peaceful and quiet with a good community spirit. And you are right to picture such an atmosphere. Here in my village the foundations are there for a community to thrive; four churches, scout groups, twenty four eateries, two parks, sports clubs and good schools. Under these facts and impressions of the village and its people, I was confident the local folk would be keen to take part in Macmillan's World's Biggest Coffee Morning!

That doesn't mean to say you won't have a decent turnout if you live in a very urban place, or in the middle of nowhere. So long as you shout loud enough, you'll be fine. I'm just very lucky to be living here.

Twelve weeks before 'C-Day' (Coffee Day), fifty initial invites were written, printed (thank you Sarah) and posted to residents on our close. As you can see from one of them below, the purpose of the notes were to gain initial interest in the event. Invites included ways to respond, as well as a time-limit. A healthy response would give me the confidence to commit to putting in the hours and effort needed to properly run one.

An initial interest invite sent out to local residents.

On the way to work I'd stop to chat about the event to residents and to answer any of their questions - to ease some of the anxiousness that comes with waiting. I wouldn't recommend getting too attached to the idea of hosting a World Coffee Morning at this stage, as waiting for emails or notes through the door was a bad distraction from daily life! 

In three weeks which have followed the invite delivery, me and Sarah have received eighteen replies, around forty people. With a 50/50 divide between email and letters, it proves that even in this digital age, you can't solely rely on one medium for communication. Some of the responses were amazing, with people making the effort to write a full letter including lots of positive comments. In another response I had a long email from a mum in which she asked lots of questions and volunteered to get involved with baking and kids games. Over the coming weeks I'll be doing my best to create a decent dialogue with her, as her enthusiasm and experience will definitely help.

So will forty people give me enough confidence to commit to hosting a Macmillan World Coffee morning? Find out in the next post..