Event Organizing

How To Organize Events

Organizing Skills

Every event depends on skilled organizers planning and conducting every step. Organizing is a skill that takes patience, diligence and practice to develop. There are many guides like this one to help you learn how to organize. There are several good reasons to hold a meeting: to form a local group, to show a documentary, or to have a speaker urge people to take action on a particular issue. Be sure you’re clear about the purpose of your meeting, as this affects how you plan it.

GET REALISTIC

Think realistically about how you’re going to fit organizing into your life. If you have a full-time job, you may have to juggle the time that you can spend being an organizer with the time that you need for family and friends. Consider ways that you can incorporate organizing work into the church, office, family or political activities that you’re already involved in. You don’t want to overextend yourself in a blaze of glory, only to burn out in six months, so make organizing a part of your life – not an intrusion into it.

Activities: Choose Worthwile & Exciting Things To Do

Activities are the most important part of any event. A perfectly timed and promoted event without entertaining and effective activities is a doomed failure both with the participants and with the audience.

Necessary Equipment

“There are only two important questions: What does it do and how well does it do it? If you needed it and you didn’t have it, that would suck!” —Sean Kennedy, RantRadio.com

Dress For Success

Wear suitable attire for the events you conduct. The best attire is generally a custom message T-shirt promoting your ideas or a business suit that gives you credibility. Dress neatly. Society has many prejudices, and despite the old adage, people do judge a book by its cover. By adapting your dress to your audience’s style, you’re saying, ‘I’m like you. You can understand what I’m saying.’ Rather than being distracted by your appearance, people will listen to your message.

TIMING: SETTING THE DATE THAT WORKS FOR EVERYBODY

Availabilities

Confirm when everything required is going to be available including guest speakers, performers, videos and equipment. Determine the date of your meeting to give yourself time for these preparations.

Avoid Conflicts

Before you finalise the date, make sure your meeting doesn’t conflict with any major sporting events or local community gatherings. Give yourself at least six weeks to get ready.

LOCATION: FINDING THE RIGHT SPOT & GETTING PERMISSION

Suitability Criteria

Find out the following factors in advance: seating, lighting, cleanliness, layout, room size, electrical outlets, accessibility to everyone, parking, central and safe area of town, acoustics and sound system.

Fuller Is Better

It’s better to have a room that’s a little too small. A crowded room will make the meeting seem more successful than a large, half-empty room.

Local Community Rooms

Some cities have rooms or auditoriums in libraries, community centers, or government office buildings that local groups can use free of charge. Many universities have excellent facilities, including auditoriums, that students and faculty members can often use free of charge. If you can’t find a government or library room, try renting a room from a religious group, the YMCA, or other public centre. In any case, go and see the room first.

Outdoor Locations

Apply Early To Allow For Delays

Send in any required permit applications as early as possible. It could take several weeks to get an application approved. If you are denied a permit, politely ask exactly why, then, if you are able and it is necessary, enlist a lawyer to call and try to appeal the denial.

MEDIA: PROMOTING THE EVENT SO PEOPLE ACTUALLY SHOW UP

Once you’ve got the time, location, topic, and speakers chosen, you’re ready to publicise your event. Here are some ways to do it:

1. Design and distribute materials for flyering and postering. You should develop a postering schedule that allows members to fill out a targeted quota of advertising which has been proven to work. There are metrics for certain amounts of publicity generating certain amounts of responses and your own past data gathering will give you more specific guidance.
2. Send fliers to the people on your contact list, especially new signups.
3. Get a newspaper listing in the “event” or “calendar” section. Newspapers often offer free ads to publicise community group events. Try both the established publications and the small, local papers. Once again, you may need to send a written notice a few weeks ahead of time.
4. Make a public service announcement over the radio or on TV. Some radio stations feature a community bulletin board to air free announcements of local events (called public service announcements or PSAs). You’ll have to call each station to find out its policy and time limit (usually 20 seconds) for these announcements; they sometimes require a typewritten notice a month or so in advance. Local TV stations are also worth checking for free announcements.

Recruit Promoters

Call all the people to whom you’ve mailed a flier. If they seem interested, get them involved: Perhaps they’ll post fliers, make some telephone calls, or help you set up the meeting using your outreach schedule.

Advance Interviews

If your speaker is willing, it might be a good idea to schedule talk shows or newspaper interviews while he or she is in town.

Outreach Phoning

When you do event planning or outreach, set goals for the number you want to recruit. Do basic math to determine how many you will need to call to achieve this.

When you do phone outreach, expect half the people you call to be unreachable and half you reach to participate. When planning events, expect that about half the people intending to go will actually make it.

Coverage

The event itself can become a mass media message when you manage to get coverage. Big media loves spectacles and the more visually interesting and exciting you can make your event, the better your chances of getting good coverage.

PUBLIC FORUMS

If you’ve built up a mailing list of 100 or more interested people, you may want to hold a forum. A forum is a public meeting with speakers and question-and-answer.

Conducting Forums

Most of us are nervous on the day we’re doing something special or new. While you may not be able to avoid being anxious, you can eliminate some worry (and maybe avert some misery) if you are well prepared.

A few days before the meeting: Call your speaker to confirm the date and time he or she is expected. Find out how the speaker would like to be introduced, and take a few minutes to write and practice the introduction. Confirm your room rental. Make sure your VCR or slide projector is reserved and that you have adequate extension cords to hook up the equipment.

Prepare Early

The day of your event: Arrive at least an hour ahead of time. Set up the equipment you’ll be using and make sure it works. Lay out literature on a table in the back of the room, and arrange chairs near the front of the room.

Welcoming

As people arrive: Be at the door to greet people. Circulate a sign-up sheet, but retake it when the event is ready to start.

Introductions

Introduce the speaker to start the event and thank him or her at the end of the event.

Sign Up Sheet

Ask people if they’ve added their names to the sign-up sheet, and thank them for coming to your meeting. Urge them to get involved. Give them something specific to do: write a letter, make a telephone call, or hand out leaflets. Always end on a very upbeat note.

Follow-up Thanks

A few days later, write a short thank-you to your speakers; you may want to invite them again. Mail a follow-up letter suggesting specific actions to people who attended the meeting, and be sure to add any new names to your mailing list.

Question & Answer sessions (Q&A)

A well-handled question-and-answer session can strengthen your credibility, demonstrate your knowledge, and give you a chance to clarify and expand your ideas. A poorly handled session can hurt your credibility, alienate your audience, and give your adversaries an opportunity to make their case.

Contact Database

Keeping contacts databased and up-to-date is a must for personal life as well as group organizing. Everyone should:

• Take advantage of Apple Address Book to keep contacts straight
• Take pictures of people with a camera like an iPhone or your MacBook's integrated iSight when you meet them to keep everyone straight and help with remembering names.
• Create Smart Groups to automatically track people based on keyword searches

Ideas For Empowerment Contacts

• Address Book should have a picture view.
• People's profile exchanges should be automated more effectively.

Event Medium Examples

• Speaking: Speak to people to articulate a message to the masses
• Question & Answer: Answer the public's questions in dialogue.
• Tabling: Set Up & Speak: It's like having a storefront for free ideas
• Awarding: Create awards to promote excellence
• Demonstrating: Take to the streets to make your demands known
• Touring: Take your message on the road

Rallies

Rallies are big and boisterous parties usually with a variety of activities on a stage or podium with microphones where speakers can address the audience,

Showings

Showing a video is a great way to entertain and inform an audience at the same time.

Benefit Concerts

Concerts are a great way to attract music fans.

Clubs

Tabling at popular music nights.

Work Days

Work days are simply days when an organization can meet to work on projects in a workspace or an office. Every day is a work day at most corporations, while less formal organizations tend to hold work days only when a specific project needs doing.

Meetups

Meetups are social gatherings where people with shared interests can get together to talk. Meetups can be held in informal places like restaurants and coffee houses to provide a casual atmosphere welcoming to newcomers. Using Meetup.com Meetup.com is a popular site for conducting meetups. Gathering at restaurants and cafes for informal discussion and conversation.

Picnics & Barbecues

Picnics are fun summer events to have. Getting enough food to keep people fed and happy over hours is the key.

Potluck participation

Coolers, barbecues, blankets for the ground, activities Inviting people to participate in something positive rather than just rallies and protests. Holding open meetings is not an easy way to attract apolitical people to come and participate as activists. It takes outreach to attract people to come to meetings.

Boycott

“We don’t fear regulation. What we fear is customer revolt.”

—Shell Official