Greetings Humanities Host Organizations and Sponsors,
The Wyoming Humanities Council is replacing the Humanities Forum speakers’ bureau with ThinkWY Road
Scholars Tours. We have made other changes as well. Please review the enclosed program outline, tour application, tips for organizing and project director evaluation form carefully so that you are fully aware of all the changes to the program and new host/sponsor responsibilities. Do not hesitate to send an email with any questions to sheila@thinkwy.org.
One big change is the shift from one-off presentations to tours wherein speaker presentations will be booked as part of ’in-line’ tours. The tour concept, combined with an increase in honorarium amounts for speakers based on distance and other factors, will require more collaboration between hosting organizations and more long
range planning and flexibility in program scheduling.
Speakers are encouraged to work collaboratively with hosting organizations to book tours that include a minimum of 3 presentations in at least 2 communities with populations of at least 200. Tours can include no more than 9 presentations in a single tour. Although exceptions may be made in cases where additional presentations cannot be arranged to meet the minimum tour requirements, host organizations and sponsors must make every effort to collaborate with each other and speakers to build tours that will provide a more efficient use of time and our ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours budget.
ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours will be most successful for host organizations and sponsors who are able to collaborate with host and sponsoring organizations in their own and other communities to think and plan long range, with flexible scheduling to build tours that will allow speakers to include communities located
‘on the way’. We will provide a closed ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours facebook page accessible to WHC and organization and sponsor staff, speakers and organizations and sponsor project directors to share information about their program experiences, ask questions and make recommendations.
There is no charge for host organizations, ensuring that ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours scholars, host organizations and sponsors will be able to arrange tours reaching communities with populations of more than
200 that have not previously participated. These community organizations and sponsors could use your guidance and assistance. Please consider including new locations that you have not worked with previously when scheduling WHC ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours. Also, event scheduling is required to take into consideration the times when the public are most likely to be able to attend. Hosting organizations or
location sponsors now must provide documentation of their local promotion efforts.
Completed tour applications must be received in the Wyoming Humanities Council Office (send to sheila@thinkwy.org) with a first tour event scheduled no less than five weeks after the Wednesday following the date of submission. ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours tour applications and related paperwork will be processed every Wednesday afternoon. Complete applications may be submitted by either a lead host organization or the
ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours scholar and must include ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours and the last name of the scholar in the subject line. All participating organizations and the scholar must be included in the email containing the application submission.

We have invited scholars to submit new program applications by November 4, 2015 and expect to provide a complete list of program offerings the following week after our scholar training sessions on November 10 and 11.
ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours scholars are now encouraged to contact hosting venues to begin developing tours or to fill in a tour schedule initially proposed by an organization. We want to provide speakers with specific guidelines on how host organizations and sponsors what to handle scholar inquiries before they begin contacting host organizations and sponsors with tour requests. We would very much appreciate having specific information from you outlining how you want handle scholar contacts by November 9, 2015. We will share
that information with scholars at our trainings.
Additionally we will host two 1 hour telephone trainings for host organizations and sponsors on Thursday
November 12, at 2 p.m. and Monday November 16 at 10 a.m. Any additional materials will be provided in advance so that everyone will be able to follow along. Please let us know which meeting you will participate in. We will provide a phone number and password for each date so that you may call in to join the meeting. Representatives who are unable to attend a training will need to contact sheila@thinkwy.org
to
schedule a special session.
Generally very few programs are scheduled between November and March, due in part to weather considerations.
On Wednesday, January 6, 2016, we will begin accepting completed applications for ThinkWY Road
Scholars Tours with the first event taking place after February 10, 2016. Generally, applications will be reviewed based on the time and date indicator on the submission email, on a first come first serve basis. However, if we receive a huge batch of tour applications for a single scholar depleting the budget for the entire year, we reserve the award tour requests that will e3xpose the most communities and individuals to the widest variety of speakers. As you can see we are hoping your will all get together in November and December to think ahead about programs and scheduling so that the tours may be booked early as possible. Tour submissions may begin at 12 midnight January 6, 2016.
I realize this sounds rigid and inflexible. Based on questions asked and advice given we need to be specific so that we can be as fair as possible as we all learn how the new format will work. We encourage hosts and scholars to continue to be weather aware as you plan your tours.
Although host organizations no longer pay a fee to host presentations they now must provide documentation of event promotion along with a completed project director evaluation form to the WHC
within one week following the event in their community. We will appreciate your efforts to help us increase the number of communities and individuals who are able to participate in speaker events and more efficiently use our limited budget.
Thank you for your time and interest in the ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours. Please send written questions to sheila@thinkwy.org
so that we can share the answers with everyone.
Sheila Bricher-Wade
Program Officer