Community Events

Community events, like a legislative breakfast or community forum, allow you to educate the community, local decision makers, and legislators about our key messages and the progress we've made to reduce commercial tobacco's burden. Events are successful when they:

• Educate the community and legislators on our key messages and the progress we've made to reduce tobacco's burden.
• Keep your alliance members engaged.
• Identify new supporters for your coalition/network.

Types of Community Events

This section contains information on how to choose the right event for your coalition. See below for options of events and a guide for holding community forums.

• Legislative breakfasts
• Meet & greet
• Community discussion & panel
• "State of Tobacco Use" event
• Lunch 'n Learns
• Town Halls
• Earth Day events
• ...and many more!

Tips for Holding an Event

Planning Guidelines for a Community Event

• The event should be branded as an alliance event and held in a geographically strategic location. For technical assistance in determining locations, contact Kayleigh Day.
• Agenda should highlight coalition work and contain educational content about program sustainability, health equity, and/or other tobacco products.
• Ensure adequate attendance with promotion of your event. More than 30 attendees is ideal.
• The room should fit the size of your projected attendance and not appear too large.
• Engage coalition members in planning and execution. Assign meaningful roles to volunteers, including calling invitees to confirm attendance, staffing the sign up tables, speaking, moderating, presenting, set-up/tear down, providing food, and writing thank you notes.

Planning Guidelines for a Community Forum

• Should partner with one to two related community groups as long as commercial tobacco control is part of the agenda.
• Healthy Community Forums is a step-by-step planning guide.

During the Event & Community Forums

• Have someone welcome and greet all attendees.
• Assign someone to greet and assist community/policy leaders.
• Assign someone to greet and assist local media.
• Collect home addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses for your database.
• Feature action stations where volunteers can sign up for Joint Finance Committee roles, earned media, presentations, etc.

After the Event & Community Forums

• Send thank you notes to community/policy leaders who attended.
• Let your contract administrator know how it went.
• Consider using the Event Debrief Tool as a way to document and evaluate your event.