At the weekend Mark Valladares rightly pointed out that now is a good time for local parties to start thinking about their autumn AGMs. AGMs are important not only for their role in party democracy and accountability but also for the role in having a lively, healthy local party that does politics, campaigning and socialising.
Here are my ten top tips to make an AGM (or indeed pretty much any local party meeting or event) a success. Individually, each of them are pretty straight-forward but the collective impact can make a huge difference to how well a local party does at communicating and involving people.
- Invite a guest speaker: you don’t have to be a large local party with a big name speaker; some of the best AGM speeches I’ve heard have been at very small local parties, hearing from a near-by Liberal Democrat council group leader.
- Don’t just invite current members: for the formal business, it is important to know who is a paid-up current member, but if you’ve got a speaker then it makes sense to invite a wider group of people – including lapsed members and helpers who have never joined the party. Why exclude them from an interesting talk?
- Invite those from neighbouring areas you work with: inviting people from neighbouring local parties or councillors from elsewhere in the same council area to an AGM is a good way of helping smooth and improve local links.
- Have a decent sign-in sheet: a group of people in a room is a prime opportunity to make sure the local party has their full contact details – phone, email and mobile. So why pass up on it by not asking?
- Make sure new people are welcomed: obvious, but not always done. One method that works well for many local parties is to have one person volunteer to make sure they personally talk to every new person who turns up and to introduce them to others.
- Work on the opening speech: the first few minutes can really set the tone – welcoming and interesting or boring and lapsing into jargon? It’s not the most important speech in the calendar by any means, but some opening remarks at AGMs I’ve seen really could have done with 30 minutes of extra thought and preparation the day before.
- Put effort into publicising the AGM’s existence: you’re not forced only to advertise the AGM through one posted mailing that simply lists the agenda items. Too many AGM mailings fail to answer the question, “why might this event be of interest to me?” Yes, the mailing has to include the formal business information, but it doesn’t have to be presented in a boring, dry manner. And don’t forget the scope for using email, Facebook, Flock Together and other online tools to publicise and to provide last minute reminders.
- Publicise future events: if you’ve got a group of people into a room once, now’s the time to let them know when else they may wish to congregate in future.
- Given people some campaigning to go away with: whether it’s leaflets, petition sheets or other forms of campaigning, don’t forget that we’re not just a debating society.
- Follow-up afterwards: email in particular means it now is very easy to let people have follow-up information after an AGM. You don’t need to wait a year until people can see the notes of what was decided, the text of the speech of your guest speaker or whatever.
Got any other top tips? Do share them in the comments thread.
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5 Comments
Fine in theory, but what do you do in practice, when one of the local party exec is threatening to join the Labour party before the AGM.
Another of the local party exec is suspended from the local party for having the temerity to wear glasses and be on good terms with local journalists.
Oh, and membership has dropped about 25% recently?
Under such circumstances, getting ten people along to the AGM (which we failed at last year) is problematic when the Chair and treasurer don’t usually turn up!
@John – is it possible that the four points are in some way linked?
People generally don’t want to get involved with a “failing” executive committee. I’ve seen that happen in local parties where membership has gone up, yet the party has been unable to fill all the places on its committee.
The Chair should really be the first person you contact about the date of the AGM. If he can’t make it, then rearrange for a date which he can make.
What you’d need is a new Chair & Treasurer to try to enthuse the party. If someone’s threatening to join Labour because of one action the party’s done locally, let them – if it’s because of the coalition, have someone sit down and talk it through with them, and if they still want to go, let them.
How much contact does the local party have with its members outwith election time? It might just be that people are waiting to be asked, but won’t volunteer directly.
OK all common sense and here are some things NOT to do:
1. Put elected representatives/exec committee on a pedestal. It may seem a good idea to have them on a stage or at the front of the meeting but it will lead to a “them and us” feeling that will not enthuse the groundlings.
2. Structure it as an event where the representatives/exec committee are continually being thanked for the work they’ve carried out in the year in question. Similar to the above; it’s much better that they thank the non-participants for their money/time/commitment/votes. These non-participants are, hopefully, the future of the party.
3. Invite the press. If they come they won’t be impressed and will almost certainly stifle debate – but do issue a press release!
4. Speak in acronyms and jargon.
5. Assume everyone knows everyone else. It is important to use full names – of course those running the event will know who Bill and Kate and Hamish and Pat are but the newcomers could well be left well adrift of proceedings.
Talk politics. This year, the AGM should be our members’ opportunity to say what we want to get out of the mid term review of Coalition policy
Here in Winchester, we don’t have AGMs. We have mini-conferences – with policy discussions, debates, training sessions, outside speakers – and a very small formal AGM at the end.
Moving to this format has been transformational. Attendance and involvement is through the roof. AGMs are now something we all look forward to.