How Five Yearly Meetings Welcome People to Annual Sessions
FGC extends congratulations to five yearly meetings – Canadian, Philadelphia, New York, Piedmont, and Lake Erie Yearly Meeting – that have posted advance information for their 2026 Annual Sessions. Thank you! This is a great way to welcome and integrate newcomers! Identify strategies that these yearly meetings used for early publicity. Find recommendations for publicizing any recurring event in your faith community.
To view a list of Annual Sessions dates in 2026, visit here.
This article was created on December 30, 2025, which is six months ahead of most groups’ Annual Sessions. Since websites change over time, the information you find on the linked pages may be different than what is portrayed here.
Piedmont Friends Yearly Meeting & Fellowship
Piedmont Friends posted site photos on their website. Showing site photos is can help people who have a variety of access needs! It helps people envision the event. First, event planners visited Haw River State Park a year in advance. They took photos of the conference room, dining space, and outdoor amenities.
Sharing site photos is a great way to welcome and orient people. If someone has social anxiety, they can understand where large groups are likely to congregate and make a plan for quiet spaces. If someone uses a wheelchair or stroller, they can look at your photos to identify the single step into the entrance of the main building. At Piedmont Friends, when event planners toured buildings at their future state park, they took pictures of an ADA-compliant bedroom. This gives people specific information about whether the space will be accessible to them.
Recommendation: If you are planning an event, take the time to visit the site well in advance. Walk around the campus and take pictures. Pay attention for bumps to enter a building, and note whether stairs have secure railings and handholds. On your website, show people these details as well as the natural beauty of the space.
Canadian Yearly Meeting
Friends at Canadian Yearly Meeting posted information about their event six months in advance. This helps people plan ahead and save money for the event. The website for Annual Sessions includes specific, up-to-date information about youth programs with a personal invitation from the Youth Program Coordinator. Because they posted it publicly, this information is visible to all parents, not just the people who happen to be well-connected.
Canadian Friends also chose their plenary speakers well in advance. Their website shares briefly about the credentials and interests of their plenary speakers. This can entice newcomers to register early in some cases.
Lastly, Canadian Friends make it clear that people can attend Sessions online. If you know that some parts of your event will be hybrid, then post that on your website as soon as it is confirmed.
Recommendation: Tell parents what to expect at your yearly meeting’s event. If you’re able, get organized well in advance so that you can share key details like plenary speakers.
Lake Erie Yearly Meeting
Like Canadian Yearly Meeting, Friends in Lake Erie organized early to confirm several details of their Annual Sessions. Their website shares the date, location, and an event overview. If you’re a newcomer on their site, you’ll be able to understand that Annual Sessions is made up of business as well as worship and fellowship. You can get a feel for the event by accessing last year’s epistles. Epistles and information from prior years is linked directly to this year’s Annual Sessions page.
Lake Erie Friends also offer some helpful orientation information for newcomers. They describe what people enjoyed about meeting at Ashland University in the past. If you’ve never been to the campus, you can rest assured that you’ll find easy parking, good food, and a compact campus.
Recommendation: Look through your program evaluations from the last Annual Sessions gathering. What did people appreciate? Share this proudly on your website for future events. If your annual sessions have a similar schedule from year to year, then post a sample schedule from last year. This gives newcomers a sense of what to expect.
New York Yearly Meeting
The website for Summer Sessions at New York Yearly Meeting welcomes new people in several ways. These include:
- A dynamic Cost Calculator to estimate the price of attending
- Clear definitions of Quaker jargon
- Clear boundaries on what programs are offered remotely
The Summer Sessions webpage shares details about what a Quaker practice means for New York Friends. If you attend a Meeting for Discernment at New York Yearly Meeting, you can expect that there will be two periods of waiting worship and a final period of reflection. If you are new to Quaker practice, you know that you can ask for a “Whisper Buddy” — someone who whispers, writes notes, and talks with you after the meeting to explain what happened.
Hybrid events mean different things to different people. To keep expectations clear, Friends in New York Yearly Meeting define which programs are offered remotely and which are not. Their website shows that special care and thought has been given to Friends attending online: the Online Care Committee helps online participants connect with each other after Business Meeting.
(To view the Cost Calculator, click “make a copy” on the link above.)
Recommendation: If your meeting has online components, keep in mind that connecting online happens differently from connecting in an auditorium. Rather than leaving online participants to watch the crowds file out of the room, give them a breakout room to talk together.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has a standing page on their website to share about Annual Sessions. This means that each year, whenever someone wants to learn about Annual Sessions, they visit the same page. This setup is helpful for web workers as well as visitors: if another Quaker organization links to your site, those links do not expire over time.
Friends from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting share about why they chose Cheyney University as their gathering space: it’s a Historically Black College or University (the first!) and it was founded with a grant from Quakers.
Recommendation: If your leadership team chose the event site for specific reasons, then share those with the public! This improves transparency and demonstrates how you have though through the pros and cons.
This article was written by Johanna Jackson on December 30, 2025. To learn more about why attending Annual Sessions is important, view the New Quaker Checklist.