Staying ENGAGED and CONNECTED!

By Julia Pannell

In a recent online webinar by IFEA, I was so impressed and inspired by the group talking and giving us as event planners ways to stay ENGAGED! As a volunteer for several nonprofit organizations, I got very excited about moving forward with energy and a renewed enthusiasm for reaching people and staying CONNECTED! I learned not to make decisions for other people, and to not let the current challenges determine what we as event planners do in the future. The future will be a strong, favorable response from people based upon how we, as planners, both respect, react and respond!

One of my favorite nonprofit organizations that I work with is called Friends of Memorial Lane. We do 5-6 events a year at our wonderful Memorial Lane, which is a part of the Jim Burks Firefighter Memorial Park here in Granbury. Memorial Lane has the distinction of being the ONLY KNOWN park in the United States that both honors and remembers past, present and future heroes from the Military, Law Enforcement and Firefighter world of servants.

All of these events are well attended, expecting over 500 this year on Memorial Day. As the park is a beautiful, but small park, we were having to look at canceling our International Firefighters Event on May 4th, Our National Police Week, May 8-12th (with an opening event on May 7th) and possibly our very large event for Memorial Day on May 25th. NOW! what do we do to let our first responders know (especially during this time) how our community feels about them. How do we ENGAGE, how do we CONNECT? How do we have a visual impact in front of our community to put out appreciation signs saying “Thank You”. How do we have an impact on our firefighters and law enforcement servants to keep them inspired to do what they do each and every day?

The answer came as I remembered one of the IFEA group participants talking about keeping out in front with as much visual as possible.........so...

• STEP 1: We are using one of our members, owner of Granbury Multimedia, to use his professional and creative skills to help us create videos for all 3 events.

• STEP 2: We are using Green Fox Marketing, our local marketing provider, to send all the videos out just like they would information about our events.

• STEP 3: We turned to our Chamber of Commerce and they are going to send the videos out right before each event to more than 1000 recipients.

• STEP 4: Visit Granbury, our award-winning tourist information center, has agreed to send the videos out to all of their contacts, allowing us to reach thousands of folks!

• STEP 5: All Board Members of this great organization will put it on our Facebook pages, and forward to all our contacts.

• STEP 6: We are sending it to all 9 Fire Department Stations in Hood County (ALL are volunteer firefighters - they don’t have to do this job!) and to all our branches of law enforcement asking them to distribute to all their employees!

Our Mayor, Nin Hulett, our regionally-recognized bagpiper, Robert Silvestri, and our vocalist, Brayton Mitchell, all stretched their resources, while keeping safe distancing, to provide beautiful videos to merge with our final products. All this has been done by digital outreach. This has truly been an effort to bring unity to our community! Before you know it, we will be ENGAGED and CONNECTED!

While Hood County and Granbury are under a “Stay at Home and Stay Safe” policy; this is a way we can still fulfill our mission of honoring and remembering those who go to the front line each day without question for YOU and ME! Our events this year are powerful videos which are helping our organization to fulfill our mission!

Thank You! IFEA for giving me the great ideas that inspired Friends of Memorial Lane to stay ENGAGED and CONNECTED! This year is a time of challenge, and I feel we have met the challenge!

About the Author:

Julia Pannell, Chair Person, Friends of Memorial Lane and the founder and vision maker for the Memorial Lane Project. Our Board is made up of strong visionary leaders. She also serves on several committees for Visit Granbury and is the Community in Unity Chair for Forward Training Center.

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