Chutney Checklist

October 9, 2007

Hi KhushDC Gov'nors,

Please welcome Amy Shah as the new KhushDC Treasurer! Amy has been the at-large Board member until now. I am leaving the Treasurer's post as I will be out of town for the next few months i.e. I will be the one who will truly be at large.

Since I am leaving, I thought I'd share with you my perspective and experiences in making the Chutney dinner events a success. I am certain that Chutney dinners will be at least as well-attended - if not more so - during my absence. Nevertheless, you will be able to apply the techniques that I used if you find them useful. I'm guessing that these techniques will be just as useful in attracting Khushies to events other than Chutney.

In my eyes, a Chutney dinner is successful if 20 or more folks attend it. The number of attendees in August, September and October were 23, 22 and 20 respectively, compared with 1 in June and 0 in July (or vice-versa). I looked into the lists of attendees and found that the number of *distinct* people who attended the Aug, Sept and Oct Chutneys totals exactly 50! That tells me it's possible to get 50 people to attend a future Chutney dinner, and it's easy to get 50 or more people to attend a more popular event such as a potluck.

8-10 women attended the August event; only 1 attended the September event and 2 came for the October event. The fact that 8-10 women attended the August event tells me that Chutney dinner is not the kind of event that women are naturally repelled from; it just means we have to do more to attract a larger number of women to future Chutneys.

Some of you may have read the description that I wrote of the October Chutney; I posted it yesterday at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/khushdc/message/10803.

Chutney Checklist

1. Choose a dinner venue 2 weeks to 10 days before the event; make sure the restaurant is large enough to have a seating area for 20-25 people.

2. Choose an ethnic restaurant (Indian, Thai, Chinese, Ethiopian, etc.) rather than American or French. Khushies prefer spicy food and spicier gossip.

3. Pick a restaurant that's near the popular dance clubs; preferably in Dupont since not only is Dupont the gay area, but it's also centrally located so it's easy for folks from Maryland and Virginia to converge to.

Anti-RSVP

4. I have explained to some of you what I mean by an anti-RSVP. Whereas an RSVP is one where the Board passively waits for confirmations from people, an anti-RSVP is one where we actively solicit our friends and acquaintances, asking them if they would like to come to Chutney dinner. You wouldn't believe it, but there are quite a few Khushies who feel very happy that a Board member has 'extended them a personal invitation', and they decide to attend Chutney only because of that.

If I know the person well-enough, I anti-RSVP them by making a phone call and inviting them by talking to them in person (rather than leaving the invitation message on their voice-mail); otherwise I invite them by sending a personal email.

In my experience, the anti-RSVP has a 'yield rate' of only 50% for any particular Chutney i.e. at most 50% of those who I have solicited are able to make it. But even those who can't make it remember the personal invitation, and tend to attend the next Chutney because of it. Of the 20 folks who attended last weekend's October Chutney, only 5 were passive RSVPs; the other 15 anti-RSVP'ed to me or Harish or Jahangir. That tells me that absent the anti-RSVP, only 7-10 people would have attended the Chutney dinner.

Reminders and Advance Feedback

5. Keep sending reminders about the event on the khushdc listserv during the week before the event. This has always been done: it was also done in June and July. Yet, why did no one show up in June and July, and why do people show up now?

I think it's crucial to give advance feedback about the number of attendees. When we tell folks something such as, "We have 10 confirmations so far, and 4 Maybes" with each reminder, readers start thinking, "Hmmn, maybe I should attend Chutney this time, since it looks like quite a few people are attending, and I will get to meet them". It doesn't matter if you've built those numbers 10 and 4 by soliciting (anti-RSVPing) your friends, acquaintances and lackeys.

It's nice if the numbers go up with each successive reminder. It gives the message that more people are joining in; that the event is getting more popular, adding to the incentive to join it.

On the other hand, if we keep sending event reminders without providing any feedback of the number of confirmations and maybes, folks start thinking, "Oh, it looks like the KhushDC Board is not getting anyone to attend Chutney, so they are desperately sending reminder after reminder. If no one's going to Chutney, why I should I bother going? I won't meet anyone, and it will be a big waste of my time."

I believe that this absence of feedback played a big role in the collapse and cancellation of the June and July Chutneys dinners, and it could play a similar role in the future.

Advance Gossip

6. Whenever I anti-RSVP someone, they always ask me, "So, who else is coming to Chutney?" I first tell them the number of people who have confirmed, and I then use my knowledge of who is out, and who are this person's friends, who he knows, etc. to tell them the names of some of the other attendees. When they hear the names of their friends, they too feel like going; when they hear the name of an acquaintance, they are like, "Oh, I haven't met so-and-so in such a long time. I think I'll attend Chutney too."

This sort of thing works for me as well. For instance, I went to see Feroz Abbas Khan's movie, "Gandhi, My Father", only because I knew Divya was going to see it. Never mind that I did not sit with Divya and Shiva during the movie. If on the other hand, I didn't know that she or any of my friends were going, I would not have bothered going to see the film, no matter how highly acclaimed the film was.

I know a couple of people who didn't go to see any film at the recent APA film festival simply because they didn't know anyone else who was going.

Large as KhushDC is, it is small enough that many Khushies attend events only if they know the identities of some of the attendees.

Target Listservs

7. We should post the event announcements on the following listservs.

KhushDC: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/khushdc/
KhushDC-Events: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/khushdc-events/
KhushDC-Girls:
KhushDC-Members: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/khushdc-members/

AQUA: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aquadc
APIQS:

Place an ad in the Blade if possible. Messages on the khushdc-events listserv can be read by anyone (even non-members), so when we send a Chutney reminder, we can include the link to the detailed message posted on khushdc-events.

Event Clash

8. I imagine that one of the reasons why just 2 women attended last weekend's Chutney was that KhushDC Girls was having a long 3-hour meeting the next day. Forced to choose between which of the two events to attend on a single day, it's but natural that most women chose the KhushDC Girls event. (There were many other events on Saturday, Chutney day, so women may have chosen those over Chutney, too.)

For the past few years, I and a couple of others have been running a sub-group of Marathi-speaking gays, and we host a potluck once in a few months. We make sure that the Marathi event isn't on the same weekend as a KhushDC event, since we don't want to force people to choose one event over the other.

I realize that it may not be possible to achieve such 'event-balancing' with KhushDC Girls or with any other group, but it may be worth trying.

Caveats

Having read through all the above, you may be thinking, "Duh, why has Ninad bothered stating the obvious?" Or you may be of the opinion that some or none of the above points will affect event attendance. You may well be correct: Chutney attendance may well exceed 20 or even 30 in the coming months without doing the Anti-RSVPs and making all those advances: Advance This and Advance That!

But I thought I'd post these points because I believe that they are of use not just for Chutney but for any event where we have to make an effort to get people to attend. I think Jalwa parties and potlucks are two popular exceptions: hordes of people will attend without the need for solicitations or advances!

And whether you see value in the above points or not, you must be thinking, "Ninad must be totally jobless for writing such long posts about frivolous matters!" And you're quite correct: I am indeed jobless! I'll be looking for a full-time permanent job after I return to the DC area after spending a few months in the netherworld.

I am posting this as a file titled, "Chutney Checklist" in the Files section, for easy future access.

Enjoy! (Or don't!)

--Ninad