There is a difference between planning a party and planning an event. When you’re planning a party for friends and family, you are focused on creating a moment for people you care about. Planning an event works a bit differently; you are balancing the purpose of the event and the entertainment of your audience.
School leaders plan hundreds of events a year, both big and small. Each event is an opportunity to engage students and families with your school brand and values.
The most common way to start planning a school event is to create a to-do list, which can quickly become a list of decisions that need to be made. When event planning is approached in this way, it can become a slow, overwhelming process of making hundreds of small decisions—from picking balloon colors to debating how to spend your small budget to recruiting and wrangling volunteers.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. When you define the event's purpose and engage in the visioning process, you can make decisions quickly and delegate once cumbersome tasks to peers and volunteers.
In order to do this, you must approach school event planning in a different way. By following these five steps, you can ensure that your event will not only create a lasting impression on your K-12 community, but also be an enjoyable and smooth process along the way.
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Chapter 1 Identify the event purpose
Chapter 2 Clarify and refine the event purpose
Chapter 3 Create the event vision/budget
Identify the event purpose
The first step in successful event planning is identifying the purpose. How will this event enhance the overall mission of your district, school, or department? Before you dive into the decision-making process or the fun and creative aspects of the event, it’s important that you fundamentally understand what you’re trying to accomplish.
Use these guiding questions to identify your event’s purpose:
- How will this event enhance the mission/strategic plan?
- Will this event raise money?
- What is the budget for the event?
- Will this event engage new stakeholders?
- How will this event fit into the academic calendar of the year?
- Is the success of this event vital to the overall mission of our work?
Guiding Questions
Event Producer
Clarify and refine the event purpose
The next step is to communicate the event’s purpose to key district/building stakeholders i.e. the superintendent, board members, and principals. You will do this by going through the guiding questions from step one. This step allows stakeholders to help clarify and confirm the event's purpose before making decisions. These conversations will help you align your event with the broader mission and goals of your district.
During this process the purpose may expand or completely change. Having a clear understanding of the event's purpose allows you to make informed and aligned decisions. This clarification process is essential for the overall success of the event.
Once this process is complete, it’s important to communicate the refined and agreed upon purpose to all stakeholders. The event purpose will not change after this step. You’ll ask stakeholders the same guiding questions as step one and record their responses:
Guiding questions to stakeholders
- How will this event enhance the mission/strategic plan?
- Will this event raise money?
- What is the budget for this event?
- Will this event engage new stakeholders?
- How will this event fit into the academic calendar of the year?
- Is the success of this event vital to the overall mission of our work?
Is this event approved by all stakeholders?
Create the event vision and budget
With the event purpose acting as the guidepost for the event planning process, you can now start the visioning process.
Imagine you are a participant at the event and use these guiding questions to create the event vision:
• Who is the audience?
• What are they experiencing?
- What do they see?
- What do they hear?
- What are they interacting with?
• How will they feel at the:
- Beginning of the event
- Middle of the event
- End of the event
- Post-event
• What is the price of each component of the vision?
Taking time to imagine how your audience will experience your event will allow you to make informed operational decisions.
Start your to-do (Q2Q)
A cue-to-cue is a tool taken from the theater that coordinates actors, props, and lighting. An event cue-to-cue (Q2Q in shorthand) is a running timeline of the event that you can share with your team and work on collectively. The time put into this document will help keep you and your team on the same page, both literally and figuratively. It’s also a place where folks involved in event planning and executing can seek answers and not rush to your event producer with a long list of questions.
Family School Night
Closing: feedback and debrief
Gaining feedback on an event doesn’t have to be a complicated process with long meetings and surveys. It can be as simple as talking to your attendees at the event. By encouraging staff and volunteers to engage with participants, you'll be able to get feedback without having to go through the hassle of a survey.
It’s also important to get feedback on the event process. Doing a debrief with key stakeholders will allow you to discuss pluses and deltas.
Pluses are things that went well at the event or during the event process. These will be different by department.
A parent may say that a plus was that registration was quick and simple to understand, where a volunteer may say a plus was there were volunteer box lunches and plenty of water available.
You want to go beyond the surface and dig into how the event functioned. Make sure you do the same thing with deltas.
Deltas are areas of the event that didn’t work, where you want to see change in a system or component of the event. A delta could be that parking was not clearly marked and parents were circling the block for hours.
Maybe the communication of when to prep for the event was not clear, or the placement of a bouncy house made it difficult to load buses.
If done well, this process will not be a list of gripes and pats on the back. Rather, it will help inform future events through discussion, reflection, and learning.
Lastly, don’t forget to thank people! It is a best practice to send a thank you note or email within 24 hours of your event. You can make this a quick process by drafting a thank you email or letter before the event, then make edits based on the event directly following. This way you can simply hit send/print and mail thank you letters quickly and easily. An event is never truly complete until every thank you has been sent. Since you’ve already identified all of the people working on the event in your Q2Q, this last step should be a breeze.
Every event that your schools produce is part of your district’s brand identity. These curated experiences influence how people think and feel about your school, staff, and students. By using this step-by-step system, you will increase your brand awareness and leave a lasting impression on students, families, and stakeholders.
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