CHAPTER 11: RESIDENT MOTIVATION
A key part of programming is the audience. Without one, you don’t have a program. Here are some tips on how to make your residents know that you appreciate them and in turn motivate them to attend your activities. These tips are geared for programs that will involve only your residents.
The Teaser- a good publicity campaign is important to any program. The Teaser works like a movie trailer, bits and pieces of information that will entice you to attend. Here’s one to use and think about ways to modify for different programs: for a coffee program, purchase inexpensive coffee mugs from a dollar store and attach a slip of paper with date, time, location information to the handle, or write the information on the mug. Another way to do this is by having a series of advertisements. For a body art/piercing program, you might 1st have a quiz on what celebrities have piercing, the second flyer could have the answers, and the last flyer could have an interesting article about piercing or tattoos. Each of these would also have the title, date, time and location of the program.
Thank You- you had great attendance at the program, why not show that you appreciate their attendance. Place candies in a baggie and include a note saying, “Thanks for Coming to the Program!” Have a take home gift in association to the program, i.e. for a tattoo program, give out fake tattoos. The simplest one of all is to take attendance and write a thank you note. When possible, include the title, date, time and location of your next program.
Frequent Flyer Points- this is a tip that requires follow through for the entire semester. Make up a sheet that has a space for the person’s name and address and then make lines or boxes that could be checked each time that person attends one of your programs. Buy a special stamp or pen that cannot be easily duplicated so that no one is tempted to cheat. At the end of the semester, give away a prize to the person who has attended the most programs, i.e. a gift certificate to an off campus eatery or to the bookstore.
Special Day Awards- this is a way to recognize achievements and celebrations for residents. This is something that would need to be done all year long. You can post signs for birthdays, good grades, helping out another resident, neatest room of the month, floor clown and many more. Just use your imagination! Print out plenty of signs from your computer, or purchase pre-made signs from a store like the Learning Station.
Historian- have 2-4 residents be the historians for the floor. Their job will be to take pictures of floor members while on the floor or at activities, record anecdotes and put this in a scrapbook for the floor to see. Have the historians on the agenda at your floor meetings so that they can ask people to volunteer information and pictures to add to the scrapbook and to pass around the scrapbook as the year goes on.
Floor Recognition- it’s important that you work with your residents to recognize others as a floor.