In a Sea of Strategic Event Planning, Your Event Should Make a Splash

 

When your event needs to make a splash — figuring out how, when, and where to jump into the deep end is kind of a Denny Civic Solutions specialty move. 

At their core, events that push your advocacy priorities forward should do three things: 

  1. Focus your audience’s attention on your core message

  2. Build relationships

  3. Meaningfully advance your effort toward your final goal

Rep. Nancy Guenst addresses attendees.

Take our recent press conference in Harrisburg with the Care for PA coalition and Pennsylvania Coalition of Nurse Practitioners: the event’s goal was to highlight just how difficult patients’ access to care has become, and highlight how Full Practice Authority (FPA) for Nurse Practitioners can help solve the crisis. 

Our job was to:

  • Help identify and organize speakers 

  • Coordinate logistics with legislative sponsors and coalition members

  • Work with partners to locate Pennsylvania patients to tell their story

  • Ensure everyone’s messaging reinforced the theme of patient access

All of these tasks were in service of our policy goal: moving SB 25 (Bartolotta, Boscola) and HB 1825 (Guenst, Khan, Cabell) forward. The event was a resounding success, earning statewide media coverage from ABC27, ErieNewsNow, and WENY, among others.

The “Solutions That Are Working in PA” Summit.

Then there’s our recent summit with the #PANeedsTeachers coalition, where we worked alongside our friends at the National Center on Education and the Economy to organize and host the “Solutions That Are Working in PA” summit. This included building and managing the registration platform, sending invitations, email reminders, and handling the day-of operations. On top of that, our team was also on hand to provide photography for the summit’s sessions. 

We also partnered with our friend and press guru Mark Nicastre to ensure this gathering of stakeholders didn’t go unnoticed, with several local news stations dropping by to interview presenters. You can check out those interviews and coverage from ABC27 and WGAL here.

Second Lady Blayre Holmes Davis offers remarks on Owen’s Law.

And of course, we couldn’t forget the event to mark the passage of Owen’s Law — now Act 32 — at the Mid-Atlantic Mothers’ Milk Bank last month. The bill signing featured local legislators and members of the Shapiro-Davis Administration like Acting Secretary of Health Dr. Debra Bogen, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Human Services Sara Goulet, and Second Lady Blayre Holmes Davis. 

Speakers highlighted how the new law breaks down equity barriers for infants and families across Pennsylvania, ensuring access to the best medicine available for vulnerable infants — donor milk. Our team handled the invitations to legislators, and worked closely with the Department of Health’s communications department in overseeing content and the run-of-show. Check out coverage from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and CBS here.

So if you or your organization are circling around an event idea, but aren’t quite sure where (or even how) to jump into the deep end — give us a whistle.

 
DCS Team