Grab Bag Meetings

This is essentially a meeting that is best for those times when there may be few members – usually times around major holidays. For example, if July 4th occures on a day other than Friday, it is often that many people may take the Friday closest to the holiday off and can’t come to the meeting.

Rather than cancel the meeting, we often have Grab Bag meetings – one where all the roles (from TM down) are put in a bag and as people arrive, they pick their role from the bag. Once everyone has arrived, if there are still duties in the bag, then members pick again until all the duties are assigned.

Some things to consider if you will be putting on such a meeting:

1. Sometimes, it’s good to at least assign a TM so there is a more experienced member “herding all the cats”…
2. In some cases, it might be good to put the more difficult duties in a separate bag – TM, GE, SP, TT as they do require a little more preparation and experience to be able to do with little to no notice. Then the less experienced members can choose to pick from either bag.
3. There are manuals that have speeches that involved impromptu presentations. So again, it might be good to remind advanced speakers to see if they have such a speech and can get credit for it.
4. Remember that, like any other meeting, you can get credit towards your leadership manual requirements for performing a given duty.

The key thing to remember is that you are here to have fun. So if you end up with a duty that you think is too hard, just have fun with it.