Planning a Successful Community Event

Many times Central Office people are removed from the after school programs and events that school-based administrators and teachers plan and attend regularly.  But once in a while, the school district decides to host an event for the community, and that’s where you, a central office administrator, come into play.  

I recently found myself in charge of planning such a community event.

 Designing and implementing this type of occasion requires big picture thinking AND attention to detail.  

I love the big picture, the visioning and the dreaming, and I can spend too much time in this area.  

Although I can be detail-oriented (Indeed, most central office positions require attention to detail!), I do not enjoy this part of the process as much as the dreaming part.  If I am not disciplined, I can forget an important detail or two that will negatively impact the event.  While a missing detail may not result in a night of disaster, it may make the district and me look unorganized.  Not a good look for anyone.  

So I plan….and plan.  I create list after list of all the details I am afraid will get lost in some of the bigger aspects of hosting a community event.

So a good idea is to do a  great deal of big picture and detail planning.  A project management strategy works well, even for smaller one-time events such as a parent and community meeting.

(I am working on a project management post, so look for it soon).

I developed a FREE District or School Event Planning Tool to help you and me maintain a focus on the overall purpose of the event AND to help us stay on top of the many details.  The tool is a template that I created in Excel (can’t live without my spreadsheets!).  I attempted to capture as many of the details involved in planning an event as I possibly could, although I am sure you can think of others.  The beauty of the template being a spreadsheet is that we can add rows or columns as we need them.

Although I created this planning tool for my blog readers, I wanted to “test drive” it to ensure that it had practical application.  So I used my community event as the pilot.

For my event, I needed to thoroughly understand the targeted audience and purpose of the meeting.  

Having a solid understanding of the purpose allows you to know what message (and therefore, what materials you will need) is important to convey during the presentation.  

Having this understanding also means that you will be better able to plan the flow and timing of the event.  These items fall more into the big picture area of planning the event.

Detail planning may include location/space (an auditorium? Breakout space?), food (do you need food or light refreshments?), door prizes (what type of items and who is responsible for purchasing), programs (content as well as printing).  In addition, what type of personnel do you need?  In my case, I needed an emcee, several facilitators, and staff to capture stakeholders feedback.  

For my event, the target audience included parents as well as community and business partners.  The meeting’s purpose was to share information and solicit input from these stakeholders on a new district initiative.  The input was important for the district to obtain because it allows us to be responsive to our community as we move forward with the project.

Many times district initiatives are grant funded, and foundations often want to see that the district has taken the pulse of the its community in shaping the grant proposal.  In these situations, it is important to solicit input from all your various stakeholders.  For most districts, stakeholder groups could include parents, community members, business partners, students, and teachers.

Schools find it difficult, sometimes, to entice parents to evening events, unless the event involves student performances.  Nothing like a school play or athletic event to bring our enthusiastic parents.  Unfortunately, district offices do not have that built-in draw for parents and community members.

If possible, piggybacking onto a school’s already planned event is a good idea.  This does not always work, however, and I found myself in just this situation.  So no built-in draw, but one thing I did have going for me was a modest food and supply budget.  

Though not all parent and community events involve input and feedback from the audience, my event did.  After the initial presentation, audience members participated in focus groups, with a staff member or volunteer capturing responses and notes.  

However, often the best ideas come hours later, after one has time to think on the topic or questions.  It is important to provide a way for audience members to contribute input after the event is over.  This is also helpful for those people who are more reserved about sharing their thoughts in a group setting.  For my event, I chose to provide participants an online survey to utilize later.  

Any time I have a big project or event, I try to form a team for planning and implementation.  I am fortunate that I have a few people who are working with me on this event.  One of them has been instrumental in helping me with the big picture elements, and another person has been most helpful in identifying and prioritizing the details of the event.

Don’t forget to download my FREE District and School Event Planning Tool.  Do you have any event planning tips or tools that you have found especially useful?