Richmond,VA Recruitment

As discussed in our last meeting, we wanted to start some recruitment activities to get more people involved in the Richmond VA Fanforce. This topic will be dedicated to recruitment ideas, activity and progress.

Two ideas were presented at the last meeting.

1) Put postings on the local craigslist.com site under "Activities" and "Groups". Here is a sample posting:

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Richmond Star Wars FanForce looking for new members

Are you a huge fan of Star Wars? Do you enjoy the movies, the books, the toys, the cartoons, the costumes and props? Come meet with like minded individuals. We are local Richmond area collectors, costumers, prop crafters and enthusiasts who meet and discuss everything Star Wars related to share our passions and knowledge.

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2) Putting posters up at VCU during the fall session. This would carry the same or similar message as above but be dressed up with some artwork by Nekokaiju that would no doubt make it stand out and attract attention.

Question for the group is "what do you think the best avenue of contact is for interested people?". Here are some options:
1) Just direct them to the Forum boards on the email and using tear-offs on the flyer
2) Specify an email address to contact for more information (I thought perhaps this would be good for the craigslist posting to weed out serious people from the people who just want to comment).
3) Specify both options on both communications
4) Specify email on craiglist and both on flyer

There are several other combinations but you get the idea.

Other recruitment ideas are welcome!

 

Great ideas. (that's what I get for missing the meets) No doubt that both ideas would help, I would guess option 2 or 4 make sense for contact.

We could also look in to doing the holiday parades? Does the Garrison Tyranus do any of them? (guys, you know who you are) Heck we could build a float on my truck and get our kids into the action as well.

When it comes to off the wall ideas I'm your guy

Of course sometimes it just turns out to be[image=http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e370/Dadof3/bs.gif]

 

The Parades sounds like a great idea but would involve an investment as I believe they charge quite a bit for entry in the big ones. Midlothian Days Parade in October is a good small parade we could do with the local 501st group this year. A couple of us joined (even some without costume) last year and it was a good time for the kids.

The recruitment sounds really good, especially targeting VCU.

 

Any idea what the fees are?

Maybe we need a list of parade events in the area, with dates and contact names so we can see what we want to do.

 

I will see what I can dig up.

 

No inquiries from Richmond Craigslist as of yet, I had posted in the Groups section the week before and posted again in the Activities section yesterday. The both will stay out there for 45 days.

 

I'm the Public Relations Officer with Garrison Tyranus of the 501st, and it looks like FanForce and the 501st are thinking along the same lines! We are currently working on getting a group together to march in the Midlothian Days Parade, and investigating the possibility of other Richmond Parades later in the year, although the entry fee is steep for some events.

We would be interested in working with Richmond FanForce on future Star Wars events. Is there a person who would be a good primary contact with your group to help put some of these things together? I am the main events organizer for Garrison Tyranus, plus we've just brought on Allen Showalter as our Regional Events Coordinator for Richmond, so we hope to be able to be putting together a lot more events in the Richmond area in the near future.

If you're interested, please feel free to get in touch with me at lfrye@cox.net or send me a PM here on the FanForce boards- I mostly reside on the DC FanForce board, which is local to me, but plan to be popping by Richmond more as well as we're trying to launch more local events with the 501st and other local Star Wars groups.

I'm also trying to build relationships with Rebel Legion, Tidewater Alliance, DC FanForce, and the R2-D2 Builders Club- if we could get all of these organizations on board for Star Wars events, imagine what fun we could have for the big ones...

-Lori Frye
Public Relations Officer
Garrison Tyranus
501st Legion of Stormtroopers

 

Hi Lori!

Allen's on here once in a while and he's been to all the recent revamped FanForce Richmond meetings so we are ready to work with the 501st to co-ordinate efforts! The person to contact here would be DERTHH_MAWLZ, he's also on GT boards as JoeRichmondVA, not a member of GT yet but working towards it with his in progress Tie Pilot costume. We try to keep the 501st business out of the spotlight to allow FF it's own space so we aren't over here heavily promoting it all the time. We are trying to make the FanForce in Richmond a strong Star Wars group again just like the DC chapter is, please feel free to come and hang with us here and give us pointers!
Thanks!
Luke

 

Thanks for the tip, Luke! I'll note that DERTHH_MAWLZ is the local contact for Richmond FanForce, which will help us pop information back and forth on Richmond events as we start to put more of them together. The more cool Star Wars events each of our groups get to attend, the better! I'm working on developing a list of contact information for all the Star Wars fan groups in Virginia, so we can join forces and put on some impressive Star Wars events if we want. Add all of our groups together for an event and we could put on quite a show...