Checklist for Planning a Successful Community Event

No matter what kind of community you’re talking about – from a residential community to a group of like-minded people with an interest in common to a team of industry professionals to an online community – community events can be a lot of fun. They’re a wonderful way to bring people together and foster community spirit through networking, communicating, and socializing.

But if you’re the one responsible for planning a community event you might be looking at the planning process as an overwhelming list of tasks that, if not completed on time, on budget, and to the community’s expectations, could spell failure for your event.

But community events can be successful if you get organized, and a checklist is a perfect way to do so. The following is an event planning checklist template to help you plan your next event.

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Know Your Audience

Before any event planning can begin, you need to clearly identify who the event is going to be for. Knowing this will help the other planning steps fall into place more easily. This involves not only knowing what community your audience is a part of but also other important facts about them.

With that in mind, the first step in your event management checklist involves answering some questions about your audience. Will they be local or are they coming in from locations far and wide? If they are scattered, will there be an online option for them so that they can attend remotely? Is the demographic primarily young or older, male or female, interested in talks and presentations or more upbeat activities?

Is it a professional event requiring a more corporate event planning checklist, or is it a gathering of a community more social and less formal in nature? Answering these questions will help frame the rest of your planning steps.

Click HERE to download the CMX Guide to Community Building

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Define the Event’s Purpose

Now that you know your audience, the next step is to define the purpose of the event. What are the event’s goals and objectives? What feelings and takeaways do we want the members of our community to leave with when the event is over? Is the event purely informational or is it a more interactive networking or team-building event? If it’s a corporate event, planning might require more talk-based and informational sessions with social events later, while a less formal event can have more social activities sprinkled throughout.

Learning your audience’s interests and preferences from the previous step will bring the purpose of the event into clearer focus. You can then cater the remaining checklist items to the type of event you are throwing.

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Decide on a Budget

The next item on the checklist for planning an event is the budget. Setting a budget will allow you to outline the skeletal framework for your event and will give you a map of all the moving parts that will need to be in place, and how much they cost. It should include things like lodging, venues, transportation (if members are being bussed or flown in as well as if your lodging and your event venue are two different places), food, ticketing, merchandise, audio video equipment, and internet connections.

It should also include things like regulatory costs (permits, licenses, etc.), liability insurance, security if needed, staffing if not being run by volunteers, and entertainment. Your budget will show a detailed breakdown of how much your event will cost and will help you keep those costs under control.

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Select a Venue

The right venue for a community event depends largely on the preceding choices you made about the type of event you're throwing. Of course you want the venue to hold the number of people that you will be hosting. But when selecting a venue, you also want to know the amenities that come with the venue.

Everything from restroom facilities to internet access are important considerations when selecting a venue and a must for any checklist for event planning.  Other things like proximity to lodging can have a direct effect on other costs. For example, the farther away the venue is from the hotel where your attendees are staying, the more expensive the transportation costs will be to get your attendees to the venue.

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Create a Timeline

The timeline is a breakdown of the activity for your event. It actually consists of multiple timelines: one for attendees that is the daily schedule of activities and the times that they occur, and one for your team that will break down what they need to have ready and where they need to be to make sure the community members attending the event have a smooth, trouble-free experience.

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Promotion, Promotion, Promotion

Now that you as the event planner have your ducks in a row, next on the event planning checklist is to get the word out about your event. This should be done through multiple channels. Regular emails can let people know about the time and date of your event and can include links to your website or community page. Social Media can engage current and new community members with content about previous events and build excitement about upcoming events.

One way to get community members to connect ahead of your event is by using Bevy.com’s Discussion Pages. Bevy’s platform can keep your community engaged before, during, and after the event and is an essential element to any event planning checklist. Another helpful resource is CMX Guide to Community Building, which can be downloaded here.

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Contact Local Businesses and Sponsors

A great way to defray some of the cost and give your budget some wiggle room is to engage local businesses that may be willing to donate to your event or to gain sponsors who can provide goods or services in exchange for advertising to your audience.

Engaging local businesses can help build good public relations for your community and getting sponsors can not only help with the cost of your event but also introduce your community members to other businesses that can help them.

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Plan Activities

Once your timeline is fully fleshed out, you can plan each of the activities that will fit into your schedule. The planning process will show you if your activities are cost effective relative to your budget and realistic relative to your timeline. Doing dry runs of activities will make sure your staff is able to execute on game day and will also expose any unforeseen issues that could occur with your activities so you can plan how to address them.

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Have a Plan B

As you're moving through these steps, completing each one will make you feel more confident that your event will go smoothly and that you’re ready for when your attendees arrive. But every event has at least one factor out of your control that falls into the category of “This event will go smoothly as long as it doesn’t ________.”  If your event is outdoors, what happens if it rains? If your event relies on internet access for remote attendees, what happens if your ISP fails? If you need to feed your attendees, what happens if the caterer doesn’t show up?

While it’s impossible to plan for every possible disaster, having a contingency plan for the big ones will give you peace of mind and will make you look like a rock star when a mishap occurs, but you solve the problem quickly.

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Finally, Have a Great Event

Following this “how to plan an event checklist” will help you be as organized as possible before your event and as prepared as possible during your event so that your community has memorable experiences to talk about after the event. Making these steps part of your event planning checklist template can help ensure that your current and future events go off with minimal bumps in the road. And if one should occur, you’ll be prepared to handle it so that your community members have no interruption in their event activities.