The Greenville Forward Road Show

This past weekend, Greenville Forward took to the road to take our mission to a new audience at the Upstate Women's Show. This was the first time that we have done such intense PR and it was very exciting and definitely a great chance to tell people about what we do. The show lasted from Thursday-Saturday and all of the staff at Greenville Forward pulled together to make sure that our booth looked fantastic and that we communicated the goals of Vision 2025 and Greenville Forward as well as possible.

Over the three days that we manned our booth, I would estimate that we were able to personally talk to at least 500 people, possibly even 800. With the show attracting nearly 10,000 people in itself, you can imagine how heavy the foot traffic was on every aisle. One of the most amazing reflections I had after each day was over was how many people had never heard of us and how they definitely now do after spending a little bit of time learning what we are up to.

We gave away tons of Greenville Forward bumper stickers, copies of our education survey, fliers for the "Noises Off" fundraiser we are doing at the Greenville Little Theatre on Sept. 24, and lots of other Greenville Forward literature. We also had a drawing to win one of our new Greenville Forward hats and a Columbia fleece.

One of the greatest benefits of the show is that talking to so many people who are anxious to be on their way led to the development of our 30 second elevator pitch. Since I have blogged about this before, I thought you might be interested to know what it is. So, here you go:

"Greenville Forward is a nonprofit that was created to implement something called Vision 2025, a plan outlining the goals we hope to achieve as a community by 2025 in Greenville County. It was created after the great success of Vision 2005, the plan developed in the late 80s that led to the eventual revitalization of what is now our beautiful downtown. So, once the bricks and mortar part of the long term vision was completed, our civic leaders came together to meet with various members of the community to determine what the next step should be. From these meetings came Vision 2025, and we work daily to make the vision happen at Greenville Forward."

Though it was exhausting at times to talk to so many people all day for three days, it was truly a rewarding experience and we hope that the people who heard about what we do will support us in future endeavors and spread the word about the mission of Vision 2025.