HOW TO HOST A VIRTUAL TOWN HALL MEETING

Although it is imperative to stay safe and practice social distancing during the COVID-19 health crisis, it’s still important to bring people together to foster community action and Zoom has emerged as an easy and affordable way to hold online meetings.

Below are some tips on how to organize an effective Zoom town hall meeting.

1. Do a gut check. Is your issue important enough to warrant a town hall meeting? If you decide that, yes, it’s important enough to merit a town hall, follow these instructions.

2. Set a date. Carefully pick the date and time to ensure that the people you want to attend can easily log on. Check your calendar to avoid holidays, major sporting events, back to school nights, etc. Pick the best time for the people in your target audience(s) to attend. Six or seven in the evening seems to work the best for the majority of working people. One hour is a good amount of time to plan for, knowing it may well run 10-20 minutes over as people inevitably join late and Q&A periods can be lively.

3. Set a target for the number of people you want to participate. Will it be a success if you get 20 people to attend or do you need 50 or 100 participants to make this event worthwhile? Keep in mind that roughly half of the people who register for the event will actually show up so you should aim to get twice as many people signed up as you hope to have show up.

4. Invite everyone you can think of – multiple times. Make sure your organization has a healthy email list of people to invite. If not, do some early brain storming to come up with other organizations and reach out to them to ask for help sharing the invitation and spreading the word. Submit your event to local online calendars and message boards, and share it on social media. In addition to spreading the word on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, you can also create a Facebook event and invite any other organizations who’ve expressed interest to be co-hosts. Plan to share the event repeatedly via email and social media!

5. Make sure your Zoom account is up to snuff. Do you have a Zoom account that allows you to hold meetings for longer than the 40-minute limit offered on free accounts, and that can accommodate the number of people you expect to participate? If not, find someone who does or pay to upgrade your account.

6. Zoom call or webinar? Decide if you want to structure your town hall as a regular zoom call in which everyone can see everyone and anyone can speak, or as a webinar in which only the assigned presenters can speak.

7.  Make a plan for tech assistance. Identify someone who really understands Zoom and get them to agree to do a practice run with you and the speakers a few days in advance and have that person attend the Zoom in case of technical difficulties.

8. Schedule the town hall via Zoom. Requiring registration via Zoom is a good idea because that way you will capture the email addresses of anyone who signs up to attend – helping to build your list for future efforts. If you choose the webinar format, you’ll have to register your speakers when you schedule and make sure to get them their unique presenter log-ins.

9. Pick an interesting title for the town hall meeting. Keep it short and avoid anything boring or too process-specific, if possible.

10. Line up your speakers. Keep it to three or fewer. Pick people who know your issue well and who are also good at public speaking. Confirm that they can attend both the town hall and the practice run a few days prior to it and invite them three weeks in advance. Send them a calendar invitation for the town hall with the Zoom log in information and make sure they’ve accepted both of them. Follow up several times to make sure they are still able to participate.

11. Solicit speaker bios. Ask your speakers to share short biographies with you by no later than a week before the town hall.

12. Line up a good moderator. Some good options include a local reporter, a League of Women Voters volunteer, or local teacher or debate coach. Confirm that they can attend both the town hall and the practice run a few days prior to it and invite them three weeks in advance. Send them a calendar invitation for the town hall with the Zoom log in information and make sure they’ve accepted both of them. Follow up several times to make sure they are still able to participate.

13. Schedule a practice run one to three days before the town hall. Make sure that you send the Zoom log in as both an email and as a calendar invitation to your speakers and your moderator as well as your tech support person. Follow up to ensure that everyone has the information and has accepted your invitation.

14. Prep your moderator. Provide the moderator with the short biographies of each speaker and confirm that they received them.

15. Plan future engagements. Talk to other staff at your organization to come up with two timely actions you can share at the town hall meeting. For example, “call NAME on DATE at this NUMBER”, “Sign up for email updates at URL”, “Join our next meeting on DATE at TIME”.

16. Map it out. Write out a “run of show” for the town hall and share it with your moderator and speakers prior to the practice run. A run of show is a detailed, minute-by-minute, outline of how the Zoom meeting will run. Below is an example that you should feel free to revise to fit your format and topic:

5:45 - 5:55 PM: All speakers should log on to the Zoom to ensure that video, sound and screen sharing functionalities are working properly and troubleshoot any technology issues.

6:00 - 6:05 PM: Moderator welcomes attendees, asks everyone to mute themselves as they join and encourages people to change their display name to include their organizational affiliation or where they’re from, as is most appropriate.

6:05 - 6:10 PM: Moderator welcomes everyone and explains how the event will unfold and how the question and answer period will be run (explain how to use the raise hand feature, how to unmute yourself, etc.) The moderator introduces each speaker.

6:10 - 6:20 PM: Speaker 1 speaks.

6:20 - 6:30 PM: Speaker 2 speaks.

6:30 - 6:40 PM. Speaker 3 speaks.

6:40 - 7:00 PM: Moderator calls on people during the question and answer session.

7:00 - 7:05 PM: Wrap up.

17. Press or no press? Decide if you want to invite the media. If you do, draft a news advisory (click here for a sample news advisory you can customize) and send it out three days in advance. Call any reporters you specifically hope to have attend. Draft and send a news release to reporters one hour before the Zoom town hall is scheduled to begin.

18. Debrief and next steps. The day after the event, meet with your organization and discuss what worked and what didn’t work and come up with changes you may want to make for future town halls. Each time you do it, you will learn more tips on how to have an effective online event.