Each person who will be conducting
a fundraising party for the Ruth Institute will want to cater the event to their friends. What will your
friends be accustomed to? A cocktail party by the pool? Or maybe a barbeque
Invite five to fifteen people depending on your house size and comfort. An overstuffed or under stuffed
house makes an event hard to accommodate. Inform your guests about who Dr. Morse and the Ruth Institute
are. Not only is the Ruth Institute helping to “make marriage cool” through various programs, but Dr.
Morse is a strong voice in our media and culture in defense of traditional marriage. Let them know she
will be talking to them about how they can help the Institute and join our team. People do not respond
well to surprise Fundraising events—give />
Depending on the kind of party you choose to have, you may want to think about asking you guests
for a small donation before they even come.
The Ruth Institute will provide the rest! (Speaker, donation envelops etc) So sit back, relax and enjoy
the event! We want to take a moment to thank you for your efforts in supporting us. We cannot continue
to protect marriage without your help and support!
If possible, compose the letter in Microsoft Word, Notepad or some other word processor. If that isn’t possible, try writing out the letter by hand beforehand. It is very difficult and cumbersome to create a letter on an internet web page.
For San Marcos residents, it is probably best to submit letters to North County Times since an individual can submit letters to them every two weeks. The San Diego Union-Tribune allows only one letter from an individual every 90 days. Also, the San Diego Union-Tribune seems to be more liberal than the North County Times.
North County Times comes in two versions, North County Times for northern San Diego County and The Californian for the Temecula area. Letters may be submitted to either or both as far as I know. The formats are identical.
Letters to the editor are limited to 200 words. Longer letters will be rejected. (Microsoft Word has a “Word Count” function on the “Tools” menu.)
Submitting letters on line to North County Times/The Californian is very easy: First, bring up their website, www.nctimes.com
Click on “Contact Us” in the upper left corner of the page.
Under “Send a Letter,” click on either “A Letter to the North County Times Editor” or “A Letter to The Californian Editor.
Fill in your name, email address, mailing address, phone number and letter subject. Paste or type
your letter in the space allowed and click on “Submit Letter to the Editor”.
That’s it. You’re done. After the first letter, you may get a phone call from the paper just confirming that there is really a resident with your name at that address and phone number. This is probably to prevent them from being flooded with letters with phony addresses and phone numbers.
by Jamie Gruber, Our Previous Executive Director
Before you do anything make sure that you follow your campus protocol for bringing a speaker onto campus.
Contact your student government or student life to make sure you fill out the necessary paperwork
Taking into account the size of your school and the surrounding support to make sure that you reserve a lecture hall that fits the size of the event. Larger venues look empty and don’t look successful.
Publicity is essential to a successful event. First check your campus’ policy on advertising, and then efficiently cover your campus with flyers (see Ruth Institute approved flyers). Creating facebook groups or events or getting the word out through listservs is also a great tool. Nothing beats word of mouth though, so talk it up at your club meetings and with your friends.
You will also want to publicize at the local Churches or community organizations that you know would be interested in a Ruth Institute event. This ensures high turn out and community interest in your club.
Now that your have students and the community involved, it is important to get faculty and staff on board. A great tool to get a lot of student attendance is to find faculty who support the topic of the event and encourage them by giving extra credit for attendance.
Make sure your campus newspaper covers the event so that the following day there will be recognition of the event. Send the standard news release to the campus paper, and to any alternative campus papers. This has two-fold benefits: first, it is a follow up for those who attended and second it is publicity for your club on campus.
Plan an event that is at a time and date that maximizes potential attendance.
To continue after the event!
Think about creating a club on campus that promotes the values that the Ruth Institute shared in its
talk.
Radio publicity can be a great boon to your event. Make a list of local radio stations that might be
sympathetic to the event. Dr Morse has lots of talk radio experience and can give them an entertaining
interview. Call us with the list and we can do the rest.
Try to guess the size of the event and plan the hall accordingly. You do not want a venue that is much larger than the guest turnout. This makes the room look empty and the event unsuccessful.
Publicity is key to a successful event. Make sure that you advertise in the appropriate mediums. If this event is being held at a church for example the bulletin and website would be a great way to get the word out. Please utilize the pre-approved Ruth Institutes flyers. If you would prefer to make your own flyers, make sure that you contact us.
Word of mouth is the best way to get the word out. Encourage others to come with excitement for the event
Plan an event at a time and a date that maximizes potential attendance.
If your event is at a Church make sure that the pastor is involved and comes to the event. It is important to include him, so that he can carry the material over to other aspects of the Church
To continue the ideas learned from the Ruth Institute Event, start a Ruth Support Group chapter in your neighborhood
Radio publicity can be a great asset to your event. Make a list of local radio stations that might be sympathetic to the event. Dr Morse has lots of talk radio experience and can give them an entertaining interview. Call us with the list and we can do the rest.
The Making of the Smart Sex Talk
by Alison Contreras - Ruth Institute ITAF graduate student
To me, the hardest part about making this event happen was finding student 
support on campus. Since I was the only one on campus that had been to the Ruth Institute Student Conference, I had to work at relaying my vision of the talk I wanted to see at Rice to other students. Additionally, my network as a graduate student is very limited. At Rice, because no student group existed on campus that solely dealt with the issues of Love and Marriage, there was not one student group to contact. While I knew this topic would potentially interest anyone who was disenchanted with our generation’s dating culture, for ease of scheduling I started off by going first to the student group I was a member of, the Catholic Student Association, and asking them if they would host. Having a host organization up front is very helpful since there were many hands in place to help pass out fliers. On our campus you must be a part of a student organization to book a room. Fortunately for this talk, with Dr. Morse in town for an already scheduled talk, the dates were limited which actually made it easier. We choose an evening talk during the week to allow students to eat dinner and come by for dessert.
Simultaneously, I did a blitz-Krieg on every other faith based organization on campus whose religion’s values I know respect the sanctity of marriage. I also contacted the women’s resource center. I found a list of all the student groups on our campus website and was able to directly write the club’s leaders to see if they would be interested in helping me host a talk at Rice. I sent out over 20 emails. This was a very hard task, since at that point although I did have a speaker and an approximate date; I had many different talk ideas and said that in the email. While I had good intentions of seeing which topics interested people the most, I do not recommend doing this. The more precise you can make this initial email, the better. People want to help out if there is a clear-cut idea and an exact role they can play in helping with the event. You want to portray confidence in your event, since ultimately this person is taking a risk by agreeing to help you (especially if they don’t know your speaker), and requiring limited involvement from people is a good way to get more people to help you. Be prepared for many groups to either not respond or to respond that they will help you advertise only. While maybe not ideal, getting the word out and advertising is one of the hardest parts, so this is really a huge help. I’d also try to meet with the club’s leaders in person so that you can properly explain your idea. We put half sheet size fliers on all 11 college cafeteria’s tables one week prior to the event and 1 day prior to. We also emailed out to the campus list-serves and created a Facebook event for the talk. This was huge as we knew about how many people to expect. I put out large yard signs pointing the way to the room, since it was a difficult location on campus (bought for $5 each at Lowe’s and are reusable). I followed the advice online and choose to slightly smaller room over the large one (75 seats vs. 215) and had a packed house with people sitting on the stairs. I really believe this further hyped up the excitement for the event and the response from the students seemed to confirm this! Although I was sponsored by the CSA, when another Christian student group responded, they were very reliable and helped provide feedback to how students from their group would react to the advertising material. Ultimately, they were also able to help provide part of the refreshments and advertise personally to their members, which was a huge help.
The title of the talk we eventually choose was “Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up Culture,” based on the title of Dr. Morse’s book.
I wanted the topic of the talk to be something that directly affects student’s lives as well as to ignite them with an interest in learning more about marriage issues. While it’s definitely necessary to address same-sex marriage, I feel that it’s more difficult when the foundation of what sex and marriage means for heterosexual couples hasn’t been addressed. Also, in my experience at Rice students either haven’t formed their opinions on same-sex marriage or completely lack confidence on how to talk about the subject of same-sex marriage, so I saw this as too intimidating a subject to start off with. I originally saw a talk concerning issues related to sex and dating for college students to come first and unite a group of students, and eventually other topics could be discussed. One thing that I feel almost all students of faith can agree on is that there is a disconnect between the ideal dating culture that respects our values and what we witness on campus. By having this talk, we created our own little environment on campus where students could freely ask questions and see that they were surrounded by many other students who were seeking the same answers. Choosing a topic that suits your campus interest may be different but that was my thought process! The way your talk is advertised is very important. Once I had the talk scheduled, the room booked, and the refreshments taken care of, I sent out an email again to all of the original club leaders I wrote (even the ones who didn’t respond), informing them that the event was indeed taking place and asking them to help me advertise by emailing their members the attached flyer. Although the body of the email was the same, I was sure to personalize the text so that each person would know that I was not a spammer. My goals were to show the speaker’s credentials and make the talk topic relevant in a concise manner. For better or worse, here’s what this email looked like:
Hi ______! I’m writing to share an event that I think you and others in _____________ would be interested in attending. Dr. Jennifer Morse will be in town receiving an honor from HBU and has accepted an invitation to talk at Rice University on the evening of March 30th! I have met Dr. Morse several times, read her books and listened to her audio talks, attended a conference with her, and am very, VERY excited to have her talk at my home institution Rice after she’s spoken at many universities recently, including Columbia, Stanford and Harvard. What: Smart Sex: Finding Life-long love in a Hook-up World by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse When: Tuesday, March 30th, 7pm Where: Space Science Building, 106 (across from Dell Butcher) Why: (or rather) But “Smart Sex” doesn’t sound like a Christian talk…
….Well, one topic that preoccupies most Christian college students is how to balance expression of our sexuality while maintaining our values that our faith has taught us. Christian students tend to particularly struggle with this, since our faith teaches us ideals yet our culture subscribes to the lowest denominator. It has been said that the Devil will twist what is most pure and holy and that is definitely true in this case with sexual intimacy. I invited Dr. Morse to come talk to students about how to engage in relationships while honoring the goal of eventually being in a life-long committed relationship. Her talk will specifically look at physiologically why sexual relationships are only appropriate in the context of life-long love (something that sexual education never mentions) and how to properly love like Christ we must not use each other sexually but look to the truth about our bodies to mirror God’s love.
Never heard Christians talk about sex like this? I invite you to attend with your Christian and non-Christian friends! EVERYONE can benefit from the contents of this talk! Please pass the flier out and post it anywhere you feel is appropriate as well!
Please email or call me if you have any questions. After the talk there will a question and answer session as well. Thank you and God bless you!
