5 Tips In Planning A Large Event

One of my strong points is my ability to organize. I am not OCD about organization but I enjoy living an organized life. This comes in handy especially when planning large events. This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity of organizing the KidZone Services for World Outreach & Bible Training Center here in Milwaukee. Planning for such events is a lot of fun and a lot of work but I hope that through this post I am able to share with you some tips that may help you in the future to plan large events successfully.

1. Eat Healthy – This is key. This goes for any event whether large or small. If you don’t eat healthy your body will not have enough energy to endure the event. This past weekend I made the horrible mistake of eating on the run and having the mentality that I didn’t have time to eat much. I paid for it big time. At the end of each night I ached so much … it was unbelievable. I wasn’t hungry … because I had to many other things on my mind … but my body crave the energy from the food. Eating healthy before and during the event will provide you with not only enough energy during and after the event but will also help you stay on your toes mentally during the event.

2. Confirm all staffing and develop teams – This is super important. There is nothing worse than thinking someone is going to be a part of the event and then finding out the night before that they aren’t going to be there. You should always speak with the staff and get a commitment from them as soon as possible. I personally enjoy delegating things to the staff because it not only confirms their commitment but gives them ownership of that part of the event. It allows them to feel like the event is part of them and without them the event wouldn’t be a success. The benefit of this is that it lightens your load. For instance, for this past event we delegated our praise & worship portion of service to one of our young adults. Her responsibility was to create a team of young people that would learn the songs and dances. It worked well, she met with the young people, trained them and was there to help them both nights of the event. It was a huge success because of her commitment to training those young people. Without me delegating that to her I would have had to add that to my already heaping plate of responsibilities.

3. Meet with key staff – Communication is key for every event, especially for large events. You have to know what is going on and so does your staff. I recommend meeting with your staff weekly one to two months before the event takes place. This will allow time to discuss the design of facilities, event schedules, staffing, etc. Don’t try to cram it all in at the last minute. Meeting with your staff weekly and putting everything on the table before them eliminates staff getting frustration due to lack of communication and guards you from last minute rush jobs. It also is yet another way to pull a commitment from your staff as they now become a key player in the event.

4. Pack Smart – Pack your items up by location. For instance, when we pack for large events we organize our boxes in such a way that anyone could come in the room and set the room up for us. You never know what might happen. In children’s ministry we often are holding children’s ministry events while the adults are doing another event. For this reason I suggest putting a general “Children’s Ministry” label on every box going. That way when you get to the event location the staff unloading the trucks (or other vehicles) knows where the box needs to go. I also recommend that you organize the stuff in your boxes based on the where the items are going to be needed in the room. For instance, you may want a stage box, a sound booth box, a staff table box, a registration box, a game box, etc. It becomes a mess when you need a particular item but you don’t know which box it is in and so you end up looking through 30 boxes for the item or you end up having to put that project on hold until the item shows up. This unfortunately affects the entire setup process.

5. Confirm all services not control by you or your staff - This is huge. Before the event you should be in contact with anyone and everyone that is helping out with your event including those people that aren’t part of your staff. It’s a horrible thing to have times or dates mixed up. You don’t want your sound tech people to be showing up an hour late for service or for the convention center to not have a coat rack available for all your staff. These are important small things that always need to be checked in on.

I am going to stop at 5 tips today but I believe that there are many other things that can be done before an event to make sure the event is a huge success. Do you have tips you would like to share? I am always looking to improve my serve so please share your tips via the comment section below. You not only will be blessing me but everyone who visits this blog.