“Say Cheese!” © Kornilovdream | Dreamstime.comPlan Now to Document Your Outreach and Save Yourself A Ton of Work in the Future! You may not want to add one more thing to your list right now, but if you use these three easy steps, you’ll have some great material to promote your outreaches in the future.
Step One: Plan to Get Some Great Photos
If one of your staff is into photography, ask them to be the outreach photographer. Before you leave on outreach, spend a few minutes with them and discuss what shots you think will be good for promotion. That way they can bring what equipment they’ll need and they’ll already be looking for those kinds of shots on the outreach.
Okay, so maybe no one on your staff is a photographer. No worries, just ask the team. Maybe someone on the team has a good eye and some decent equipment. Ask the youth worker to help you identify a member of the team that can be the outreach photographer.
Okay, so no one on the team is a photographer either. Still, you can do it—just ask everyone to be the team photographer. Get a bunch of those disposable cameras and give one to each member of the team. When you pass out the cameras, tell them what you’re looking for and that you’ll collect the cameras on the way home. Then just develop the film and you’ll have dozens (if not hundreds) of shots from which to choose. You could even create a spiffy online photo album to showcase the group’s work.
Step Two: Plan to Get A Great Story
Use the same strategy and ask someone on your team to be the team journalist. Have them record the 5 W’s (Who, What, Where, When and Why) for each day in a journal. You could even do this online on a blog as you go so the team’s families back home can tune in and follow along. Again, if one of your staff can’t do it, ask someone on the team, and if no one is willing to do it, then have everyone do it! Here’s how: bring a notebook along that will serve as the Team Journal. Then each day, pass the journal along from team member to team member. Have someone write a short journal entry every day that covers the days activites. Whether you’ve got more days than people or more people than days, make sure that everyone participates. Oh, and make sure everyone understands that this is a public journal that will be shared with the world too—we don’t want any secret diary entries or anything like that!
Step Three: Put it All Together
Now that you’ve got the raw materials, all you’ve got to do is put it together. With a few inspiring photos and some juicy quotes from your participants, your Outreach should practically document itself. So use this stuff for your web site, your own personal newsletters, and of course for MA News! You could even use the wonderfully written post entitled, “How to Write A Brilliant MA News Article” to help you nail this step.
Of course this is just a little bit to get your creative juices flowing. There must be thousands of other ways you can creatively document and promote your ministry. Share your ideas, your past successes and failures in the comments.