5/18/2017

Since the last EOB meeting, the Outreach Committee has met twice: once in person at the Evergreen Conference and another time via a conference call.

For the first time, the Evergreen community sold merchandise at a table of the Evergreen conference. The table was successful in bringing about more sales than we've seen in the Evergreen online Zazzle store. The merchandising store was a sponsorship opportunity, and Equinox, as the sponsor, funded the purchase of our initial stock. The store raised $1,604 for the community.

Lessons learned:

• The pins weren't as big of a seller as we had anticipated.
• As expected, our t-shirt sizes need to run toward the L/XL end of the spectrum.
• Our price points on some things might have been ambitious.
• The hats were a HUGE hit.
• This gives us very good information for next year's merchandise and for any other ongoing merchandise ventures.

The Merchandise group is also exploring the possibility of an online store on the WordPress site where we can sell some of the stock left over from the conference.

Realizing that the original charge had an expiration date that passed a few months ago, the committee reevaluated its mission, particularly since it has shifted away from renting exhibit booths, cut back some of the language in the charge, and agreed that the group would also like to include the internal audience of existing Evergreen users in with its mission. Proposed Charge

In order to get more people to the Evergreen ALA session, we agreed that we should focus on a topic that might be of interest to a larger audience. For this meeting, we have decided to focus on some of the great search features in the Evergreen catalog, including the new popularity metric and the group formats and editions search. I (Kathy) will be updating the online description for the session and sending out a press release for this session.

The session will be held at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, June 24

• We will be returning to a discussion started last fall on creating a central message for Evergreen that can be used in promotional materials, on the web site, and other places where we are talking about Evergreen.
• When the messaging is complete, we plan to return to creating a conference toolkit that can be used by Evergreen users who are bringing attention to the project at library conferences. Giveaways (pens) will be part of the conference kit. As a result, the giveaways and shipping line items in the proposed budget reflect expenditures for buying and shipping these items.
• We continue to look at ways to raise funds for the project to support outreach activities. In particular, we discussed NPR-style member drives to raise funds. More investigation is needed before coming up with a formal recommendation.