26 Feb Church Event Planning: 3 Things to do NOW to Better Plan, Coordinate, and Host a Big Community Event

Church events can be a headache to plan. Oftentimes, the bigger the church is, the harder it is to plan. Everything from Christmas Eve to summer hangouts, there’s always a headache when it comes to planning. As a leader in the church, your community is looking to you for organization and leadership.

Churches have to be able to put on events that span several generations. If a church wants to stay healthy and diverse, then they need to have something for the older folks and something for the kiddos. But don’t let that discourage you! With the right processes in place, event planning can be a breeze.

If you’re planning a big event, you’re going to need some funds to help make it happen. Food, games, and party supplies cost money, but they’re all elements to a great event. We’re going to help make sure you have the right plans and processes in place. That way, you can feel confident in the event you’re putting on for your congregation.

Planning The Event

If you’re already in the planning process, then feel free to jump around throughout this post to find the perfect tips for your situation!

No doubt that planning the event can sometimes be the most challenging part. Just coming up with ideas can be an enormous task, and it’s essential to start with a good strategy.

Here are a few tips to help:

Don’t Do It Alone

You may feel it’s your responsibility as the leader to come up with all the great ideas or to create all the processes that will help your event flow smoothly. But that’s not the case at all. Almost every great idea comes through collaboration. Get a core team together and start collaborating.

If you haven’t established a good culture of collaboration, then check out this article by Forbes that explains the value of collaboration. There is definitely a right and wrong way to collaborate, and if you want to keep your team productive, then you’re going to want to do it the right way!

Set Deadlines

When event planning, it’s easy to think that the day-of is a long way out. But, it’s coming faster than you think, and you never want to take the chance of letting it sneak up on you. As a good practice, you should start planning around 4-6 months before the event. This helps to ensure that you can be thorough and that you don’t have to scramble towards the end of the planning phase.

Coordinating Your Church Event

During the planning stage, you’re definitely going to want to establish some details about coordinating on the day of. These details could include who is coordinating, what needs to happen, and who the volunteers are going to be.

Here are some tips and steps to coordinating:

Establish The Point of Contact

The point of contact for the day-of is critically important for the overall success of the event. If you don’t have someone designated as the point of contact, then it can be easy for people to get confused and not know where to turn when they need direction. This will also take some pressure off of pastors so that they don’t have to focus on the day-of quite as much.

One last thing to note about day-of is that if you are having any vendors coming, you can give them a specific person to look for and talk to if they have any questions on the day-of. Designating a point of contact will help to keep everything running smoothly.

Volunteers

Most people think the hardest thing about planning an event is getting volunteers, but we’re here to say differently. Something that can be even more difficult is delegating and keeping everyone on task. There are a couple of solutions for this, and while they might work separately from each other, they work even better when combined.

There are some great church management software options you can integrate into your process that allow you to specifically group and schedule volunteers according to tasks and dates.

For example, ReachNow from mobileAxept is a great tool that can be helpful for churches of all sizes. This solution allows you to reach out to your congregation and let them know about important updates as well as request volunteers to serve at your event.

It’s also wise to establish one person to manage the volunteers. This person could help by coordinating via software or by being the point of contact on the day of the event.

Hosting and Raising Funds For Your Event

As we mentioned in the beginning, sometimes raising funds to host an event can be a huge challenge in and of itself. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your fundraising and your space as you prepare to host.

Fundraising and Giving

Giving can be inconsistent in churches especially when community members are gone for holidays or doing different things throughout the summer months. It’s good to offer some different ways for people to be able to give to your organization when they aren’t around. Online and text giving solutions like GiveNow are perfect solutions to help get your congregation on track when it comes to tithing. Check out this post talking about some different ways to help your congregation be more consistent in its giving.

Preparing Your Space

Creating the perfect atmosphere for hosting your event might not be as easy as you thought. The church walls are more suited for worship than they are for an engaging celebration. Here are some inspirations to hopefully help you get started.

One tip we’ve come across is the importance of keeping the event at the church’s location. There are two big reasons for this. The first is the money you’ll save. At times another location can cost thousands of dollars, and in most cases, you already have all the space you need. Second, you’ll be able to get more engagement and better attendance if people don’t have to drive in-between locations.

We hope that you’ve found this information helpful. If you’re in need of a solution for helping you coordinate details about your event or raise funds, reach out to us today! We are passionate about helping churches reach their goals and are always willing to work with church leaders to find the best solution for their needs.