Making Events Happen

I'm really keen that the Shepway Lib Dems have a regular schedule of events - social, fundraising and political - throughout the year. It's great to meet up with members, and while I'm sure not every event will appeal to every member, we'd like to see a good mix of different opportunities.

As you'll know, our whole local party is run, managed and funded entirely through voluntary help. There are no paid staff (OK - there are no staff!), and there is no council, government, business or union money to fund our leaflets and campaigning. This means we're entirely free to work for local people not vested interests, but does mean that what we want to see happen, we need to make happen ourselves.

We already have some regular events in our diary, and we'd love to see you at those: our monthly "Liberal Drinks" at the Providence Inn on Sandgate High Street, and our weekly Thursday morning Campaign Delivery Shuffle. Follow the links for more information on both!

At our most recent local executive meeting, we decided to set up a members group to help us put on more events. If you have any experience in organising events (or would like to get some!) I'd love to hear from you about being on that events group and / or asking you to run an event yourself for us.

Our targets are to ensure a good mix of different events throughout the year, raise money towards our campaigning (although all events don't have to be fundraisers), and most importantly meet up with fellow members and have FUN.

The type and mix of events will be decided by the group, and I'm open to all ideas from BBQs to quizzes, day trips to table sales, debates to bingo! Any event size from two people upwards is great: in fact, smaller is often better. Perhaps you run a mean raffle, or can easily rustle up dinner for 10 (or a buffet for 30), or would be happy to host a coffee morning now and then - whatever, I'd like to hear from you!

Don't worry if you don't want to be on a group that takes ages in meetings: neither do I! I'd far prefer we made decisions and got on with the organising, so it may be we do a lot of things by email / phone with just a few meet-ups.

Email me directly at ross@shepwaylibdems.org.uk if you can get involved.