Businesses experience data breaches. Individuals experience identity theft. While the details differ between them, both can fall victim to criminals looking to steal sensitive information. As the number of victims continues to rise each year, so do the number of reasons to make document security and information protection a higher priority.
In order to help raise awareness around the importance of information security, businesses can organize community shredding events. This provides people in the community an easy way to securely shred their documents. Organizers can then also promote best practices for keeping sensitive information safe and secure.
If you’re interested in setting up a community shredding event, this guide can help. We’ll cover some shredding event basics, important logistical details, and tips you can use to make it a successful event.
What Is a Community Shredding Event?
A community shredding event is an open-to-the-public opportunity to have documents securely destroyed by a professional service. These events are typically sponsored by local businesses, associations, charities and nonprofit organizations, and even large companies.
When hosting a community shredding event, organizers have the option to ask for a donation or small, flat fee from participants to help pay for the shredding service. Some event hosts choose to cover the cost in full, offering shredding services for free so they can educate the community about security and promote their business.
The key to hosting a successful shredding event revolves around how well you organize.
Most community shredding events are held in large and easy-to-access public spaces, such as school or business parking lots, apartment complexes, or senior retirement centers. A professional shredding service sends a member of their team out with a mobile shred truck to the event location. As people show up with their documents, the expert on site will securely destroy them.
Hosting a Community Shredding Event
The key to hosting a successful shredding event revolves around how well you organize. There are a few different components to the planning process for a shredding event. These include:
- Scheduling a professional shredding provider
- Choosing an appropriate location
- Procuring permits and other required paperwork
- Recruiting volunteers to set up and run the event
- Promoting the event
- Coordinating day-of logistics
Regardless of how small or big your shredding event will be, it’s important to take the proper steps to organize and prepare for the event to ensure everything goes to plan. Let’s dive a bit deeper into each of the above components of that plan.
Schedule a Professional Shredding Provider
The first step of the planning process is finding a shredding company. You’ll want to find a provider who services your area and who has availability during your ideal timeframe.
When choosing a date and time for your shredding event, consider your attendees. You want to attract as many participants as possible to attend. Most successful shredding events will typically last between two and three hours, and in some cases, can see as many as 5,000 or more attendees.
Most successful shredding events will typically last between two and three hours.
To draw the maximum amount of visitors, aim to schedule your event for a weekend sometime in the morning, when more individuals have several hours of free time. This can also help when it comes to finding a location for your shredding event, as public services like banks have shorter hours and schools will be closed during weekends.
When searching for and choosing a professional shredding provider, it’s key to consider a few factors. Many providers offer free quotes to help you make the best choice for your budget, so inquire about no-obligation estimates. You’ll also want to ask about security levels, as well as certificates of destruction.
Once you’ve settled on a shredding company for your event, ask if they’re able to donate their services. While surprising, some shredding providers are interested in providing free or discounted services. Shredding events can qualify as community service, and positive publicity never hurts.
Find a Location For the Event
While looking for a location for your community shredding event, there are usually a few guidelines to follow for finding the ideal location.
Ensure there’s adequate room for the shredding company to set up.
First and foremost, size matters. Aim for large and open locations like churches, schools, and even hotel parking lots. There will probably be a steady stream of people moving through your event, so you’ll need the space to keep things running smoothly.
Emphasize accessibility. Not only will there be quite a few people moving through your event, but you’ll also need to account for the people you recruit to help organize the event. You might also have media partners who may be attending. And then, of course, you have the shredding company. Mobile shred trucks usually are large semi-trucks, so you’ll need to ensure there is adequate room for the shredding company to set up as well.
Procure Permits and Necessary Paperwork
Before you can officially move forward with your event, check in with your city or county to confirm what permits or paperwork are required. While not every shredding event requires formal approval, it’s always best to verify early in the planning process so you’re not scrambling at the last minute. A quick call to your city offices will clarify what’s needed, and from there, you can submit any required paperwork and get your event officially on the books.
Most applications ask for event date, location details, and vendor information.
Regulations can vary depending on your event’s location, but most communities want to know when a large truck, a steady flow of cars, or a crowd will be gathering on public property. In many cases, special event permits might be needed, along with proof of insurance from your shredding provider. A traffic plan might also be requested that outlines how vehicles will move through the event site.
Once you’ve chosen your shredding provider and event location, you can start the permitting process. Most applications ask for event date, location details, and vendor information, so make sure you have that information on hand.
Recruit Volunteers For the Event
Once you’ve hired a shredding provider, confirmed a location, date, and time, and started the necessary paperwork, it’s time to recruit volunteers to help to run the event.
The number of volunteers you need depends on the size of your event. Shred events can range greatly in terms of their shape and size. For a small event hosted by a local church, there may be as few as four or five people needed to adequately run the event. For bigger events sponsored by larger companies, shred events can scale massively upwards.
The number of volunteers you need depends on the size of your event.
Reach out for volunteers wherever you can. For company-sponsored events, you may want to consider enlisting some of your employees as volunteers by offering them free access to the shredding services. Also make use of other popular areas within your local community, such as placing flyers at grocery stores, banks, libraries, and coffee shops.
After you gather your group of recruits, it’s often recommended that you assign roles amongst them for planning purposes. Common roles for your volunteers include people to greet participants, event promoters, and event coordinators to oversee things during the event and ensure things run smoothly.
Build Awareness and Promote the Event
Once you’ve organized your community shredding event, the hard part is out of the way. All you have to do now is get people to attend. Building awareness and promoting your event can be done in a number of ways.
While some may call it “old-school” advertising, posting traditional flyers around your community can be very effective. Consider libraries, grocery stores, pharmacies, and anywhere a large number of people go every day.
Posting traditional flyers around your community can be very effective.
You might also consider contacting local media outlets like radio, newspapers, and TV about your event. Just as you benefit from sponsoring valuable community services like shredding events, these media sources can also benefit by spreading the word about your event.
Don’t forget to make use of online resources as well. Posting announcements on your website, social media channels, and local Reddit communities makes your shred event easier to find for those who miss in-person physical flyers. Once you’ve chosen a location and recruited your volunteers, you can also ask everyone to promote the event on their social media accounts.
Coordinate Day-of Logistics
With your community shredding event fully planned, all that’s left is to put your plan into action. In order to minimize delays and ensure that all aspects of your shredding event go according to plan, here are a few tips to keep in mind when the day arrives.
- Arrive early. You’ll want to be at the location ahead of schedule, with plenty of time to work with the volunteers on area signage, start time, and attendee support.
- Learn the area. If you’re not already familiar with the area, take a few minutes to find out what’s nearby. Attendees may ask for the nearest restroom, coffee shop, or highway.
- Prep the volunteers. Emphasize the importance of customer service to all your volunteers and other helpers. If there’s a problem for one of your attendees, make sure their issue is handled quickly and professionally to prevent escalations.
- Stock the basics. It’s always helpful to have bottled water on hand, as well as an emergency aid kit. If you have a budget to bring simple snacks, or your company has swag to give away, these can add something extra to your attendees’ experience.
Shredding events are a great opportunity for everyone. They offer a convenient opportunity for members of a community to come together and safely shred their documents. They also help to raise awareness of the importance of information security and preventing identity theft.
Host Your Shredding Event With Shred Nations
At Shred Nations, we specialize in helping businesses to organize, promote, and host shredding events. Document destruction becomes accessible for your whole community with mobile shredding services. We also offer off-site destruction, recurring shredding, bulk shredding, and hard drive destruction.
Partnering with a nationwide network of mobile shredding contractors, we connect you with the secure and reliable services you need to set up a shredding event for your community. Our shredding providers give event hosts the confidence that their mobile shredding services are secure. By providing a certificate of destruction upon completion of service, they guarantee their services are fully compliant with all federal and state information security laws.
To set up your community shredding event, all it takes is a quick call. From there, we can handle the rest, providing you a list of nearby providers and removing the headache of searching for suitable services. To get started, give us a call at (800) 747-3365, fill out the form, or contact us directly using our live chat to get free and personalized quotes for your event today.
