Make a Plan

You can do great things on the spur of the moment. But you can only make a lasting impact if you plan and prepare. Once you've identified your program's needs and audience, you must decide how, when, and where to tell your AmeriCorps story.

1. Get others engaged in your effort from the outset. Put together a team that could be made up of AmeriCorps members and alums, program staff, board members, and community members including recipients of services.
2. Organize a meeting of the planning group to review the many options on this
   website and other creative ideas the group might have for telling your story. Make sure the method you use for telling your story is appropriate to the story and the audience. For example:
   
   • Educate influential people: If you want to educate influential people in your community, you might host a roundtable, and select 10 AmeriCorps members from various programs to sit down with business and community leaders, elected officials, or others to discuss the various issues that local AmeriCorps programs work on, how AmeriCorps is addressing the issues, and what the impact has been on the community and AmeriCorps members.
   • Educate the community: If you want to educate the general community about how AmeriCorps addresses environmental issues, you might host an environmental service project with an opportunity for pre and post-discussion about the issue, what AmeriCorps is doing, what has been accomplished, and how the public can help.
3. Review the following ideas or create your own:
   • Host a Roundtable for Influential People in the Community
   • Honorary AmeriCorps Member for a Day
   • Speak to a Community Group
   • Host an Open House
   • Organize a Community Recognition or Appreciation Event
   • Team Up with Local Sports Teams or Entertainment
   • Create a Short-term Service Project Arenas
   • Document Your Impact
4. Think about the messages that you want to get across to your target audience and which methods of telling your story might be best for your identified audience.
5. Once a method is identified for sharing your story, identify a date/time and potential locations (if needed). Remember that you might need to be flexible on the date to accommodate certain target audiences.
6. Assign concrete tasks to individuals or work groups. Tasks might include:
   • Developing the message or elevator speech that will be used when reaching out to target audiences to participate in your event.
   • Inviting your target audience, particularly if you are targeting influentials such as funders, elected officials, business or community leaders, or state
     commissioners. The timing of the event may depend somewhat on their
     availability.
   • Securing a location, if needed, and prepping the location for your event.
   • Developing the program for your event and prepping all those who will be
     involved.
7. Have regular planning meetings so that those responsible for each task can update others on their progress.