Publicity Committee Guidelines
Drafted with inputs from John Weiland (7/18/06) and Tom Delaney (11/24/06)
1. PURPOSE: The Publicity Committee is responsible for promoting membership in the
club through making the public aware of the club and what it does. Its focus should
remain general promotion, not specific promotion of individual activities. Although it
will necessarily present many activities to the public, the committee does not have the
resources to promote individual activities that happen to be incompletely filled.
2. EXCEPTION: In exceptional cases, the committee can assist in promoting individual
activities, but this should be limited to those activities at which the club could lose
money, such as crab feasts and dances. In these cases, the committee can highlight these
events at general booths (such as at Columbia International Day) or by posting paper
fliers on community bulletin boards or other places.
3. ANNUAL EVENTS: The Publicity Committee typically focuses its promotion on
two annual events: (1) renting a booth at Columbia International Day (held on a Saturday
in mid-July), and (2) hosting a table at the Princeton Sports Fall Sale (held on a four-day
weekend in October). In some years, we have also operated at (3) Princeton’s End of
Season Ski Sale (which we did in April 2006), (4) having a booth at the Columbia
Festival of the Arts (done for a few years during the 1990s but not since), and (5) hosting
a table at the sales of other ski shops (done rarely, as these shops are not in Columbia and
generally are within the geographic zone of other ski clubs, whose efforts we try not to
interfere with). Another possibility is (6) having a booth at a “ski show,” but the shows
held in recent years have not been closer than greater Washington, and so are not
geographically suitable to provide a proper return on our volunteer investment.
4. MEMBERSHIP: Ideally, the Publicity Committee should contain at least six
members. (It did when John Weiland re-created the committee a few years ago, but this
has fallen off recently as committee meetings have not been held lately.) This number
allows for dividing up responsibilities appropriately, most notably establishing Points of
Contact as spelled out in #6 below. It also allows for an easier start to recruiting
volunteers for the two major events.
5. PROMOTIONAL PUBLICATIONS: The types used most recently are (1) paper
fliers on colored paper with tear-off strips at the bottom, hung mostly on village center
bulletin boards and in supermarkets throughout Columbia; (2) a tri-fold “slim jim”
handout (8.5 x 11 inches, folded in thirds), (3) a colored business card containing our
name, web site, and meeting location and time, and (4) a single two-sided sheet listing
our ski trips for the coming season, with some details and trip leader information. New
ideas for publications are always welcome.
6. PUBLICITY PLACEMENTS: We try to get our club name and monthly meeting
information listed in some local publications. These publications include (1) The
Columbia Flier and its sister publication The Howard County Times (published by
Patuxent Publishing in Columbia), (2) The Baltimore Sun, (3) The Washington Post
(Howard County section, published weekly), and (4) The Pennysaver, which is published
in many neighborhood editions. Generally they are more likely to publish general
information rather than detailed information about a specific paid event such as a crab
feast or dance. To prevent confusion about how these limited resources will be spent, we
have appointed a Point of Contact on the Publicity Committee to interact with each of
these publishing firms, and we discourage other individuals in the club from contacting
these firms so that we are not competing against ourselves for space.
7. ADVERTISING: We could control our own publicity completely if we paid
publications to print our own advertising. However, these advertisements typically cost
hundreds of dollars for a single placement; and best results in advertising tend to come
from running multiple placements of each ad. Therefore, we do not recommend
advertising.
8. SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUNTEERS: The committee relies on large numbers of
volunteers for some publicity activities (particularly the booth at Princeton Sports in the
fall) and maintaining good relations with the volunteers is crucial to the continued
success of the committee. Historically we have provided some food and drink at
committee meetings and in particular to volunteers manning booths. In places where the
food and drink are readily available (like Columbia International Day) this has taken the
form of a cash stipend, while at places with no easy access to food vendors (like
Princeton Sports) the committee has brought in food and drink.
9. BUDGET: In recent years, the committee’s budget has been set to handle the
following: (1) printing the various promotional publications (see above), which is the
largest expense, (2) paying the booth rental fee for Columbia International Day, and (3)
providing food and drink to volunteers at the major committee events. If additional
major events are added in the future, such as a booth at a ski show, this would also
require budget money. A separate budget did exist once for advertising, but we no longer
recommend having it.
10. STORAGE TUB: There is one large plastic storage tub that contains all of the
Publicity Committee’s products. As of 11/24/06, Tom Delaney has this tub stored at his
house.
11. BANNER: The Publicity Committee keeps a large banner showcasing the name of
the club. It is stored rolled up in a tube that is kept in the committee’s storage tub.
12. PROHIBITIONS: In accordance with the club’s treasury guidelines, Publicity
Committee members and volunteers are not responsible for accepting applications or
money for club membership or for any specific activity. Not only is it a very bad idea for
dozens of random volunteers to be accepting cash in an unsupervised setting, but random
volunteers are not qualified to explain what is and is not included in various ski trips or
other activities and hence could unintentionally misinform the public. There is one
apparent exception: a volunteer at a publicity event who also happens to have official
responsibility for accepting money in another capacity (say, a ski trip leader who is
manning the table at the Princeton Sports fall sale) is allowed to promote his/her specific
activity and accept applications and payments, PROVIDED that person first promotes the
club in general before promoting the individual activity. (Indeed we have often given
first priority of volunteer shift sign-up to trip leaders who have had problems selling their
trips.)
If anyone has suggestions for improving these guidelines, please feel free to contact Tom
Delaney.
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