Tips for Hosting a Health Fair at a Senior Center

With more attention than ever being paid to health and wellness, it’s a great time to host an event at your senior center that promotes both. The good news is that if your senior center has enough space, you can do so at minimal expense or maybe even make money off the event. The key is to give yourself ample planning time.

If you’ve never put together this type of public event before, we have a few tips to make your health fair go smoothly.

Organizing a Community Health Fair

• Form a planning committee: The first step should likely be to establish a committee to help organize your health fair. An event of this size probably requires a team of at least 6–8 volunteers. You might even want to further break up your committee into smaller groups, such as a promotions committee and a vendor committee.
• Pick a day: Survey committee members to narrow down a few good days and times. But before you settle on a date, check with other organizations (e.g., the Chamber of Commerce) and local community calendars for potential conflicts.
• Create a floor plan: Determine how much space you have for vendor booths. Decide whether you want them to be all the same size or different sizes. If you decide to charge for booth space, this will impact how much you charge.
• Establish a budget: Next come the decisions about money. Do you want to charge vendors for a booth space or offer it at no cost? Does your senior center have the funds to pay for advertising, giveaways, and incidentals like tablecloths and snacks? If you’d like to make the event free for vendors, consider recruiting sponsors to help offset costs.
• Talk to your attorney: It’s an unfortunate reality, but things do go wrong despite your best efforts to keep everyone safe. Place a call to your attorney to see if you need to create an official vendor contract and if there are any other concerns to be mindful of as you plan.
• Invite health and wellness organizations: Have your committee create a list of potential vendors and rank them by priority. If space is tight, start by issuing invitations to those you feel would contribute most to the event. Give them a deadline to respond by. Once you know which of your top priorities can attend, you’ll be able to fill in with others.
• Ask vendors to provide a service: While not every organization that attends will be able to accommodate a request, ask if they are interested in and able to share some type of service at their booth. For example, maybe have one vendor with a nurse doing blood pressure checks and another offering chair massages.
• Consider offering demonstrations: If space permits, schedule a few demonstrations throughout the day. Ask a popular area chef to do a healthy cooking presentation or invite a physical therapist to demonstrate good ergonomics while seated at a computer. Another idea might be to ask an expert from your local department of public safety to speak on emergency preparedness.
• Develop a promotional plan: You’ll need to create an integrated public relations and marketing plan to get the word out about your health fair. It might be helpful to try to line up a media sponsor, ideally a local television station, to start promoting the event. How to Write a Media Release to Promote a Center Event has some good tips for writing a media alert. You’ll also want to start sharing information on your Facebook page to build interest. For example, as a new vendor signs up, share the news on Facebook. Additionally, don't forget to advertise in your newsletter a few months ahead of time! Don't have a newsletter yet? We can get you started with a free ad-supported newsletter for your nonprofit!
• Create a timeline: Finally, create a very specific timeline for the days leading up to the event and for the day of the health fair. It should include everything from who will help set up tables to recruiting volunteers for crowd control, parking, and other necessary tasks. Also make sure to include confirmation of all vendors and demonstrators a few days before the event.

We hope these tips help you put together a health fair that is well-attended and beneficial to the community!

Updated on 03-21-2024