A few years ago I decided to start up a group based around people in our area living more sustainably. A fine idea but my thinking was rather fuzzy so I never really moved too far with it. Eventually I decided that it would be good to build it around the fairly non-threatening idea of home grown veggies – save money, provide food for the family and have fun – that sort of thing. If I could attract both new and veteran veggie gardeners we could get cross fertilisation (if you will pardon the pun) of ideas and share seeds, seedlings, produce and growing techniques and information; everybody wins! Getting too heavy with global warming and peak oil can put people off, so starting off with something a bit more positive increases the likelihood of reaching interested people.
I put a flyer together with our email and phone number and put them up around the place (Including our local Macdonalds) but never really got any bites. I knew there must be people out there but contacting them seemed to be a bit more difficult than I thought.
Then I had my second brain-wave. Our local shops are reasonably big and popular, so why not get a table, bring along some seedlings and other stuff like the solar oven and pot-in-pot cooler to spark some interest and have a bit of a stand. They are also only 5 minutes walk away so I could transport stuff easily. I knew that the centre management were well disposed towards community groups; and there were a number that had tables there regularly so off I trotted to talk to them.
I started into my spiel and was brought to a rapid halt! Before I could even commence discussion I needed $10 million in public liability insurance. What a shock! There was no group to share the cost with, only me. Although I found somebody on the internet who would insure me for one day it would cost me several hundred dollars. Bugger!
I didn’t forget the idea but had to shelve it for a while, back to the drawing board. But then something interesting happened.
Recently I have become involved in setting up some sustainable living workshops with Mamre Farm and as part of that we decided to do a promotional stint in our local shopping centre. They had no problem allowing me to have some sign up sheets and flyers for a veggie growing group as part of that and (woo hoo!) they already have the right level of public liability insurance. I was in!
We will be doing a number of the shopping centre displays, the first one went off well and we had some interest in the workshops as well as the veggie growing group. I designed the flyers to be half an A4 sheet so that they were the right size to be folded up and put in a pocket. We also had a white board and were set up so that the back of the whiteboard was covered in brochures and accessible without approaching our table, that way people could walk up and browse without feeling intimidated by us. Next time we will make sure that flyers will be available to pick up from that side of the whiteboard too. We were there on a Saturday morning from 9:00am to 12:30pm.
Some people did stop to chat, but is was good to have someone to talk to during lulls in the enquiries. If you try this and it is only you, take a book!
Update
We ran the second one and were having a similar experience when my wife suggested giving out the flyers rather than just letting the people come to us. D'oh! This worked very well and it also seemed to work better when Rachel was giving them out rather than me, so never underestimate the power of a pretty face.