Global Challenges Library
EA Picnic and Games!
EA Picnic and Games!

EA Picnic and Games!

Having an outdoor gathering with food and games can be a lot of fun, which brings people together & helps your group members to become friends with each other.

3 weeks before:

Set the date, time and location
Buy materials
Picnic blankets such as this one. (Buy one blanket for every ~6 people you expect)
Order more EA books if you don't have enough in stock
A speaker for music, unless someone on your team already has one you can use

2 weeks before

Make event public
Make a Facebook event page with your EA group as the host
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Description example

Come to our outdoor gathering to eat food and play games while getting to know fellow students interested in effective altruism!

Games include frisbee, bean bag toss, giant Jenga, and Spikeball!

Food is all vegan, and includes chipotle burritos and lots of snacks!

We hope you'll join us to meet new people, have fun, and discuss ideas while enjoying our food and games.

RSVP here and direct any questions to ______

See you there!

(In case of rain the event will be delayed by 24 hours)

Add the event to your group's Google Calendar and Slack

1 week before

Publicize event
Email and/or message those you want to invite
Make sure that the promising group members you are tracking in Airtable get a personal message from their check-in person about the event
Delegate roles to volunteers. You need someone in charge of each of these things:
bringing a speaker and playing music during the event
bringing and setting up the games
bringing the picnic blankets
bringing the EA books
taking photos
recording who came and logging the attendance in Airtable
getting takeaway food (for instance vegan chipotle burritos)

→ for instance, you can use UberEats

getting snacks

→ you can go to a grocery store, or, a day before, set up a scheduled delivery using Instacart or Wholefoods delivery

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suggested snacks if you are scheduling a Whole Foods delivery

On the day before the event

Send a final reminder to those invited
Check in with your volunteers and take over anything that they drop the ball on
Get to the location early to welcome new people

During the event

Enjoy!
Talk to new people; be welcoming to them; tell other organizers to also make an effort to be warm and welcoming to new people

After the event

Get your organizing team to follow up with anyone they had a good conversation with by inviting them to a 1-1
Let us know how it went!

→ Can we improve this template? What can you learn for future events?