Late last year BNI in Southern Tasmania held its first BNI Chapter Open House event at The Mercure Hotel in Hobart.

It was a huge success!

The purpose of such an event is to follow-up past visitors, as BNI’s experience and statistics gathered over the past 7 years shows that 43% of BNI Open House event attendees join a BNI Chapter within 6 months. This is why visitors to all BNI Chapters in the region over the past 2 years were invited. The evening ran from 4pm til 7pm with drinks and canapés on offer. Each BNI Chapter had a trade table, and selected members keen to sponsor the event also had trade tables. Sponsors for the night participated by providing a prize valued at $250. Winners of these prizes were drawn from attendee business cards at the end of the evening.

This type of event has been successfully operating in BNI for the past 7 years and its recent introduction in Australia is starting to show results!

BNI recommends a notice period of at least 4 weeks for inviting visitors to an Open House event, and planning at the Chapters level should start at 8-12 weeks before the event.

Participating BNI Chapters need a minimum of 10 members present at all times, and as many members’ trade tables as possible to show visitors the opportunity they have as a member of BNI. We recommend you try to get the media involved, and a press release helps with that. We also recommend that you use the sponsorship prizes as draw cards and a gold coin donation for entry from visitors as a fundraiser for a great community organisation.

Chapters liked this approach, so our next BNI Chapter Open House event in Hobart will be held during International Networking Week February 2011.

Results to date are four new members for the region.