How many screeners should you have on hand for a Telephone Town Hall? As with most things in politics, it depends. If you want to run a great event with Stones’ Phones, we’ll always say the more screeners, the better. Why is this the case? The more screeners you have, the more questions you can put in front of the moderator and the less time it takes to get participants through the process.
By giving your moderator better choices you are more likely to begin the Q&A portion of your Telephone Town Hall with a great question. We’ve found that the faster you get into the Q&A, the more likely participants will stay on the Telephone Town Hall for longer. A good rule of thumb is to start with a base of 3 screeners and add a screener for every 10,000 people on the call. While each event is different, we’ve found this setup to work for the vast majority of calls.
At Stones’ Phones we can provide you with screeners, but we advise you to use your own volunteers or staff. Frankly, your staff is more familiar with your issues and messaging which will further expedite the screening process. We will go through a detailed training with your staff and even do a mock Telephone Town Hall to illustrate how the questions are processed through the web interface. Our staff will also be on hand during the Telephone Town Hall to help with issues that may arise.
To read more about why the folks in your organization should shine, check out our “Moderator or No Moderator” post.