How to set-up a coffee morning:

• Contact your local Parish Clerk to ask for help regarding possible volunteers to help as they may know some people who get involved with most events locally. You can find details of your Parish Clerk by googling your Parish Council information.
• Once you have found some other volunteers, find a venue. A good start is to talk to local churches, or there may be a small café you could use.
• Decide where you would like any profits to go, for example, the church if you are using the venue for the coffee mornings or a local charity.
• Speak to your local Volunteer Bureau as they may be able to offer advice on funding to get the project underway as well as helping with volunteers.
• Once a day/time/venue has been sorted, prepare a mail drop around the area. Hopefully one of your volunteers has good IT skills.
• Try and find a volunteer who has some experience of marketing/advertising who can help get the word around and who could contact local media to report on the first event and advertise forthcoming dates.
• See if you can get a VIP to kick the first coffee morning off and do invite me along too (I will try to be there if I can!).
• Get local groups in like Citizen's Advice, Homestart, Age UK at regular intervals. Your local Volunteer Bureau will be able to give guidance on this.
• You may have regular visitors who might like to sell some farm produce or homemade cards.
• Further down the line, once the coffee morning is established as a regular community event, you might invite students from local schools to do work experience with you and you might organise a Tea Party to thank volunteers.

Remember my office can offer support at each stage!

If you need help with finding sources of funding or you need a letter of support to accompany a funding application, please email me at andrea.leadsom.mp@parliament.uk for further information.

Good luck :)