Affordable Housing Week Event Toolkit

How to make YOUR Affordable Housing Week Event a Success:

Thank you for your participation in this year’s Affordable Housing Week. We are so excited to have such a great variety of events this year! With over 30 events this year, we want to make sure we are all equipped to put our best foot forward for affordable housing! Below you will find background, helpful tips, and useful collateral. If you have any questions, please reach out to Leah!


What will HDC do?

HDC is the convener of Affordable Housing Week, and we will be doing the support work for the week. But you are the leaders here! We will be making a master calendar of events once all the details have been confirmed and issuing a press release. We will be coordinating with cities on issuing proclamations that declare when Affordable Housing Week is. We will be using our social media platforms to hype people up for the events. Beyond that, the rest is up to you!


Helpful tips and steps!

  • Create an event platform: This can be on Facebook, using Eventbrite, or any other event making platform, but by doing this as a first step you will be able to monitor event registrations. That’s important in case you are having food, wanting to print name tags, gather attendees emails, etc. Once you’ve created this, send the link to Leah so it can be added to the event page! This information will also be used to create event descriptions for the web page as well.
  • Get people excited about your event: Send out the link to the Affordable Housing Week page to your listservs and on social media. Figure out a way to get at the gist of your event in only a few sentences. Click here for some premade social media graphics to get people hyped about the week! HDC will be elevating the week as a whole, and the events we are planning, but we are unable to be the marketing force behind all the events. This means your team will have to do the outreach to get attendees and to get energy! This means making your own flyers, social media posts, etc. For ideas about social media in general here is our social media guide for the week.
  • Be clear about who your audience is: In your marketing of the event, be clear about who your intended audience is. If your event is catered to architects, say so. If your event is catered to the general, curious public, say so!
  • Learn to love logistics: Regardless of whether this is your first time putting together an event or the fiftieth, the logistics can be the hardest part. Once you have the venue secure, the technology needs in place, and any collateral you plan on handing out you are off to a good start. There’s a lot of variation that goes into event planning, but here are some of our suggestions.
    • Be wary of wifi and bring anything you need on a flashdrive
    • Make sure that you have sign in sheets that ask people for their emails so you can add them to your mailing list.
    • Have name tags either printed or with a marker for people to fill out. A benefit of these events is the opportunity to network.
  • Make sure to send/post reminders leading up to the event. Sometimes even the people who register will forget to add the event to their calendar. Make sure you are continually sending reminders!

 

HDC staff will be checking in with all our event hosts, but at the end of the day this is your event and it will take careful planning to make it a success! We appreciate having you as a part of this incredible week full of engagement, education, and empowerment. Let’s make this the best Affordable Housing Week yet!