-Event- Share your thoughts on the 2026 Spring Expo ~ FEEDBACK WANTED (2 Viewers)

[Jposch]

The club can't seem to win with the raffle, and I don't know if we want to continue doing it at all. There was a time when we were given a LOT of good stuff for the raffles, but this was pre-Covid. Now, we struggle to get anything donated at all, and when we do, it is not nearly the value that it used to be. The last few years that we sold tickets, we hardly made anything and this year, we sold a total of SIX tickets. SIX. I would be interested to hear more about how other shows are doing raffles and what they are having donated / giving away.

I can help out with this for next year.
There are a few things you can change, but there are trade-offs. We can discuss via PM if you'd like.

We handed out 1000 flyers a month before the event to most of the local stores. Everyone that I talked to was happy to give them out to their customers and Emily even put them in shipping boxes for local-ish customers.

Did the lesser known places get a visit with flyers? Forest Lake pets, sea level, etc? Many forget that there are more than 2 choices for saltwater LFS in the metro area. Granted, the others are not near the level of mn aquatics and nwa for saltwater.

 

[Reefer Oz]

Great ideas and discussion y'all! Some solid suggestions and things for us to unpack for sure. There is definitely more out there, so keep it coming. And there are no wrong thoughts around feedback and brainstorming.

How might we leverage the help of the Event Committee? What other ways can we promote the event? Are there other organizations that could benefit from our Expo that we could collaborate with?

 

[ichthyogeek]

How might we leverage the help of the Event Committee? What other ways can we promote the event? Are there other organizations that could benefit from our Expo that we could collaborate with?

I feel like this was primarily BOD led, and that's great! At the same time, I think y'all could also afford to ask for volunteers more often. Maybe it's a "hey we need people to hand out these flyers, get them from X". Maybe it's a "hey we need people to post on social media", etc. I know I'm /part/ of the Events Committee, but I'm still not sure /what/ I'm being asked to do.

Regarding collaboration: there's a lot of crossover with Reefing USA. Maybe this is a case where we could say we have two split expos, where ReefingUSA and TCMAS split the cost for two shows, one in the Fall, and one in the Spring? That way there's greater outreach?