Our county 4-H extension office hosted an open house in September. It was a great way to introduce our community to all that 4-H has to offer in our area. It was also a great way for our Horseless Horse Club to recruit new members! If your member numbers are dwindling, you might want to give it a try! This could work for any organization, it doesn’t have to be 4-H.
Representing Community Clubs, SPIN clubs and County-wide Projects
Our county has around 22 community and SPIN clubs and a number of project specific clubs. Any club or project willing to be there could make a display and advertise their club or project. We want to show community members that there’s lots of different ways to get into 4-H. Kids don’t have to live on a farm or have their own animals to be a part of 4-H. Camping, poultry, horseless horse, and small engines were a few of the projects benefiting from the open house.
Outstanding Volunteers
It was the best part of this event! Each club sent representatives to man the booths. A registration form was emailed to all club and county-wide project leaders. It was up to the leaders to fill out the form and send it back. Only one reminder was sent out about a week before the event with the deadline to register being 2 days from the reminder. No nagging or begging necessary.
The form simply asked for the club we wanted to represent and how many table we needed. We could have as many or as few as we wanted. The tables were already set up when we got there and then everyone was helping to take them down at the end of the open house. It all went very smoothly!
No guidelines or rules specified for booths and participants
It seems a little risky but there were only a few guidelines. The emails simply said to bring whatever we would like to show what our club was about but no live animals. Obviously, the assumption was that we would be responsible leaders and bring what was appropriate. We all did exactly that and the event turned out great. The small engines were a little bit loud but they only turned them on when kids were interested in seeing them run so it was okay. We didn’t bring a horse for horseless horse. We brought projects we had made during the previous year, model horses, and real horse tack. The kids loved touching and handling it all.
The Open House was a Success!
All in all, I would call our first 4-H Open House a success! The horseless horse SPIN club had about 12 interested families sign up for more information. All I have to do now is make sure that we have a fun meeting planned for October!