Last night I helped out the Georgia Center for Nonprofits with its event for the Coastal Nonprofit Professionals. It was at Billy’s Place in Savannah, and was pretty fun. Met some cool Savannah nonprofit people and learned a little bit about the effectiveness of speed networking.

Heard of speed dating? Bunch of people with name tags and cocktails going from table to table trying to get lucky fall in love.

But have you heard of speed networking?

Same name tags and cocktails, but this time people go from table to table to talk about their organizations. It’s a great concept. Two people from completely different organizations, who would not have met under normal circumstances, might find ways to collaborate.

The networking begins.

The actual rules were a little complex, but GCN had to work with the space.

  • Each person got a sticker. The sticker was one of four colors and had a number 1-7.
  • Only four organizations set up their own tables and had a color and everyone with that color came to them.
  • For round one, the person with the number 1 on their sticker would go to the table that matched their sticker’s color.
  • Everyone else would find someone of an opposite number. If your sticker was odd, you would go talk to an even number.
  • Five minutes and then the next round. At the end of seven rounds, everyone would do their own thing.

Make sense? It is a little confusing but it ended up being effective. The only problem was that odd numbers could never meet each other until the end of all the rounds. Same with anyone who wanted to go to a different color table.

Another issue was that people wanted to keep talking after we rang the cowbell. Unlike speed dating, these people were not desperately waiting for the five minutes to be over. They were taking advantage of a business opportunity in front of them. It was harder to get everyone to shut up than a kindergarten class. Seriously. The cowbell wasn’t cutting it.

But it’s kind of a good thing. Everyone was really into it! The whole evening was successful. Billy’s Place gave us some fantastic hors d’oeuvres. Melissa Emery from the Savannah Philharmonic and Vicki Weeks of Weeks Consulting talking about nonprofit branding. There was a business card raffle and two women each won a free GCN workshop. I’m pretty sure no one was miserable.

The cowbell.

I was the photographer (and projector-fixer) and I had no intention of participating because I was there to help out GCN. But by the end of the night I regretted not joining in. I really should have taken advantage of the opportunity to make some contacts. Then again, I’m already pretty swamped with the work I’m doing now. In any case, lesson learned.

I’m interested to hear if anyone else has done this kind of thing. What do you guys think about speed networking? Effective? Not enough cowbell?

Also, I’m in charge of GCN’s social media. So please check out GCN Coast’s Facebook page to see pictures from the event. You can also follow @GCN_Coast and @CoastNonprofits on Twitter. Thanks!

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