After listening to “Designing a Sizzling Point of Entry Event (POEE)”, I came away with the following thoughts:

1- We do this now but not according to an established routine – This is encouraging!! When Allie and I were investigating MHA some 6 years ago, I can remember the one of the vision banquets that we attended. Many of the elements of that meeting should be components of our POEE: 1) the visionary leader talk, 2) the gap that needs to be filled, 3) the vision for MHA’s future. A fourth component was added to last year’s vision banquet – the testimonial from Ben Cox which gave us a very hopeful vision of the possibilities that exist for our MHA students.

And while we practice many of the essential elements of a POEE, we need to incorporate these into a routine of some frequency (i.e. monthly?). This leads to my second thought …

2 – The POEE is much like a college tour – I was a tour guide while an undergrad at Miami. After about 5-7 tours, I had my routine down pat. The path we walked throughout the college rarely changed. However, I was also able to customize several parts of my talk including the places to visit after the tour, the personal stories to share, the advice, the recommendations for a satisfying lunch or dinner, etc. What made my job easy as a tour guide was that it became a routine; what made it fun was that it could be customized to fit the unique needs of each group.

I think this applies to the POEE. Our POEE is our chance to give people a tour of MHA which includes an explanation of our vision and needs as well as a chance to observe how we operate. This should be relatively standardized. As Terry said, this is also our opportunity to “get the MHA story in the heads and hearts” of the attendee and influence them to join our mission. These stories, places to visit and testimonials can be customized in order to address the differing needs of the audience.

Overall, the development, execution and maintenance of a POEE need to become a system, a process or, put another way, a ministry within MHA.

3 – We need to identify the target audience for a POEE – My impression was that Terry assumed the POEE attendees were not “consumers” of the services offered by the non-profit organization. Rather, the attendees were individuals who seemed to support the cause of the non-profit.

In our case, I think we have two groups to target with a POEE and the POEE message should be tailored to each group. The first group includes people who are NOT part of the MHA community but who would likely support our vision of classical Christian education. As Tom described in our first meeting, these are probably older individuals with the money and resources to give. The second group includes members of the MHA community who have the potential to give more or more often.

While we can tailor a message to each group, the challenge for us will be to get them to attend!!

4 – Our current community can drive POEE attendance – To build attendance at our POEE, we want to equip our MHA community with the tools to spread the word. This should include encouragement (and incentives?? i.e. discounts??) to buy and wear MHA spirit wear and providing people with the “30-second description of MHA and classical Christian education”. With these tools, there is an improved chance that people will ask about Mars Hill and people will have the clear, concise answers to give. Word of mouth works as long as we have a reason to open our mouths (I don’t always practice this, especially at home!!).

Thoughts?? Hope all is well with everyone!