Is Your Town Hall Meeting A S, M, L or XL? How Will You Find Out?

Impact of 2014 Town Hall Meetings: S, M, L, XL, or 4XL?

02/12/2014

As your organization plans its 2014 Town Hall Meeting, how will you measure the impact of your event? Will you add up the number of bodies occupying all those folding chairs? Or use the number and scope of your event’s objectives? Or measure the degree that your Town Hall Meeting outcomes have moved your community from point A to point B to make it less likely that young people will find alcohol attractive and easy to obtain and more likely that they will make healthy choices, supported by their family, friends, and community?

Let’s not dismiss the importance of getting people to show up: The number of attendees can and often does make a difference in prevention. And what could be more discouraging than to see 40 people in a room set up for 200, particularly if those who do show up are the familiar, faithful “choir”? Sure, “If you build it, they will come” was a memorable line from Hollywood’s Field of Dreams, but if you want people to flock to your event, you need a better plan. You might start by reviewing past event promotions discussed in archived TOWN HALL MEETING E-ALERTS. Town Hall Meeting SUCCESS STORIES also might offer ideas you could adapt. Recruiting a local media professional and social media–savvy young people to your planning group might be smart steps, too.

But it may not be the number of people you draw to your meeting, but who they are that will make the largest difference in reaching your prevention goal. One of the 2013 Town Hall Meetings involved only about a dozen participants. Yet the coalition that hosted the event in MANCHESTER, TENNESSEE, was completely satisfied. Why? Because it was who participated that mattered: three mayors, two police chiefs, one sheriff, and one district attorney―a group that didn’t always agree. Careful preparation resulted in all of them signing an important resolution to stop underage drinking in Coffee County.

Other communities have achieved similar results by bringing together key individuals. Historically, North Carolina’s DURHAM TOGETHER FOR RESILIENT YOUTH had been impeded in its efforts to prevent underage drinking owing to entrenched divisions among the city’s five districts. Its Town Hall Meetings broke down walls, finally getting community leaders from all five districts to the same table to begin working together. In Wisconsin, a FEDERAL GRANTEE COALITION found that Town Hall Meetings were its one activity that brought together all 12 community sectors that its grant required.

Many other community-based organizations hosting 2012 Town Hall Meetings measured how large an impact their events made by assessing changes in environmental prevention. In many places, social host responsibility laws were introduced and enacted, given widespread media attention, and generated increased public support. Other Town Hall Meetings led to stepped-up compliance checks, sobriety checkpoints, responsible beverage service training, controls on alcohol outlet density and hours of sale, and calls for increases in taxes on alcoholic beverages.  

And, of course, all Town Hall Meetings have an impact on community awareness. It makes a huge difference to prevention when the general public, specific audience segments, and key influencers, such as public officials, media representatives, and community leaders, recognize that underage drinking is a serious, costly public health problem that both needs and deserves their attention.

In the final analysis,  the impact of your 2014 underage drinking prevention Town Hall Meeting will be determined by the size of the vision behind it. A vision for the future, coupled with strategic planning, can set a process in motion that continues over years, with incremental gains resulting in large changes.