Recently Alison Poulter, a BNI Director Consultant in Christchurch, let us know about a fantastic event that members from four chapters in her region participated in.
These members came together for a special night of networking and socialising. It was organised by members who are part of SHARE New Zealand, a network of financial advisers, and Vocus Communications.
SHARE has four people at four different BNI chapters. Also belonging to one of those BNI chapters is Simon Wakelin from a company called Vocus Communications. They had a large office and he was happy to offer their office as the venue and invited Chorus, who gave a quick 10 minute overview.
Beverages and food were provided free of charge to attendees and they had a fantastic turnout of 55+ BNI members. Everyone enjoyed themselves and there was plenty of additional networking that you don’t get the chance to do in your regular weekly meetings.
By combining forces these chapters were able to dramatically increase the volume of people interacting and learning about each other’s businesses in an informal and fun setting.
The event was actually pretty easy to put on according to organiser Graeme Pickering, a member of BNI Kinesis. He said the key to its success was good communication.
- They made sure people had plenty of notice about the evening through regular email communications.
- They created and circulated flyers that clearly spelt out when and where the event was on.
When it came to the putting on the event itself, it was all fairly straight forward. They:
- Had tags with the four chapter names on that people added their names to when they came in.
- Provided a fantastic venue that helped to create the right atmosphere.
- Had a couple of members who acted as hosts – introducing people and making sure everything ran smoothly.
All in all it was a great night. The feedback so far was that people extended their networks and were happy about being able to create relationships across chapters. Those who organised it highly recommend other chapters put on similar events.
Try to do something social that involves other chapters, even if it’s just as a one off. You’ll notice the growth to your business and increased energy in your own chapter. Congratulations to the organisers and chapters involved (BNI Kinesis, Avenues, Activ8 and Pinnacle), it would be great to see more of this cross-chapter collaboration for the rest of the year.
