Host a Community Event

Community Events are a unique way to bring ZingTrain to your locale and share the training experience with people beyond your own organization. 

Imagine a member association offering a day-long Zing-Training at a reduced cost to its members. Or a few small businesses pooling their resources together for team training. Or a local cafe making the investment to sell ZingTrain workshop seats to businesses and organizations across their entire region! 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to designing a Community Event—and that’s what makes them so powerful. We’ve partnered with organizations of all kinds, in every kind of community, to create meaningful experiences centered on what matters most to them.

Here’s what makes Community Events special

• They can bring together a diversity of people from your neighborhood and community, including people you may not meet when walking down the street 
• They provide an opportunity to learn alongside like-minded leaders in your area and discover unique opportunities to collaborate and support one another
• For your event, you choose the content of greatest impact and customize the experience to suit your audience
• We can help promote it to our friends in the area, if you want!

Client Story: Connecting People in Pennsylvania

The Venango County Chamber of Commerce aims to build, serve, and promote local businesses by connecting them to a network of professionals and businesses. This mission made them an ideal sponsor for a ZingTrain Community Event. President and CEO Susan Williams has been with the Chamber for 20 years and has been excited to bring our tools and concepts to her community for almost as long!

With sponsorship from Be Here, a Chamber initiative focused on community pride and engagement, 57 participants from 35 local organizations gathered on a chilly November day. The group represented a diverse range of places, including chocolatiers, hair salons, libraries, and real estate offices.

Participants split their day between The Art of Giving Great Service and Creating a Vision of Greatness, a popular pairing of ready-to-implement tools with visionary thinking about what’s possible for the future.

The impact was immediate. Participants gained fresh perspectives, discussed how to apply the concepts in their organizations, and built a sense of shared purpose to support one another and shape the future of Venango County together.

The tools you provided not only hit the nail on the head of the very topics we’re looking to wrap our heads around, they offer CONCRETE, USEFUL tools on how to execute and live them moment to moment… We have lots of energy to put things into action with high hopes that it will lead to consistent, positive energy for our entire organization and individual user experiences moving forward.

Compelling reasons to host a Community Event

• For small operations, training is more financially feasible when the cost is shared
• Workshops are more accessible to a wider audience when they’re close to home
• It’s an opportunity to provide professional development to more people and gives your community a common language to use
• This style of training is a great way to host Zingerman’s Co-founder, Ari Weinzweig, and learn unique insights from his 40+ years at the helm of our organization

Client Story: Growing Community in Boston, MA

When Ana Sortun, Chef/Owner of Oleana, and Ari Weinzweig met over ten years ago, they discovered a shared passion for thoughtful leadership and community building. After Ana participated in two ZingTrain seminars here in Ann Arbor, she saw an opportunity to bring our tools and insights to her Boston community. Planning began in February 2024 for an August workshop on the 12 Natural Laws of Business.

Organizing this event was a rockin’ display of community as Ana partnered with hospitality consultant (and former GM of Oleana), Sara Fetbroth, Flour Bakery + Cafe, and Boston University’s School of Gastronomy!

Ari and the team at ZingTrain bring such a down-to-earth spirit and geniune enthusiasm to everything they do. There’s nothing quite like coming together as a community to grow and exchange ideas. The opportunity to share what you’re hearing and experiencing with others creates a richer, deeper, and more meaningful way to learn.

The day brought together over sixty engaged participants from a mix of small businesses – some longtime fans of Zingerman’s and others brand-new to our approach! Exploring our twelve key elements of organizational success inspired everyone with new mental frameworks to leverage, affirmed good work already underway, and fostered a strong sense of support across the community. 

Organizing a workshop with ZingTrain is like planning a day of joyful learning with the most down-to-earth facilitators around. Gathering in a shared learning experience created such reassurance in our community and provided individuals with the tools to build the lives and teams they want to lead. The ZingTrain team is simply delightful to work with every step of the way!

Plan your Community Event with us

There are so many ways to configure these types of events! Here are some top-level things we’ll consider together. You may know some of your answers right away.

• Where will the training be held? Consider the venue size, parking, and accessibility.
• Who will you invite? Who is your audience? (You may have an already-established guest list, hope to bring together a specific industry, or want to offer it up to the general public.)
• How many folks do you expect or hope will attend? We can set a go/no-go date to ensure a successful event.
• At what price will you sell tickets? This will depend on several factors, including how the training is funded, where it’s held, and what you eat!