How We Do It: Event Strategy
Synchronicity Events Team strategizing together. From left to right, Rocio Miranda, Alex Martin, Carrie Schaffner, and Meera Bhardwaj. Photo credit: Tideway Creative
[Image Description: Four individuals are seated on couches in a business lounge setting, with brick walls and glass doors in the background, engaged in a lively discussion.]
This will be a mini-series of blog posts to reveal what we do when we work on events! We will also provide guidance and tips that will help you and your team to succeed. Let’s start with the first phase: Strategy.
If you’ve ever asked yourself “Why are we doing this event, anyway?” or “Why do we do the event THIS way?” you may be feeling the lack of a cohesive event strategy. We can fix this!
Begin with a deep conversation with your team, as far in advance of your upcoming event as possible, and name as many “whys” for doing the event as you can. What do you intend to accomplish? Guests attending, communities engaged, budget spent intentionally, gratitude expressed, educating the audience, money raised, positive ‘buzz’ for your organization, guests connecting with each other … etc? [Hot Tip: if the only reason you can come up with is ‘because we usually do it, and it’s in the budget’ … it might be time to cancel this event!]
Spend some time in this conversation about your “whys”; get specific. Turn your intentions into measurable goals, and clarify which of them are the most important. Once you and your team agree on the event’s goals, then all decisions throughout the process can flow gracefully toward this vision. Which are goals you can realistically tackle this year, and which are goals to work towards over a few years?
When organizations skip this simple but essential step, it’s common to see chaos inside the event planning process. You’ll see time wasted on internal miscommunication, and budget dollars spent on non-strategic items. The more consecutive years your event has been produced, the MORE important it is to do this goal-setting process, to avoid team members falling into assumptions or operating under “habit” instead of matching their plans to this year’s goals and intentions.
Hot tip: if there are any volunteer leaders - perhaps event committee members or board members - who consider themselves decision-makers on the event, they need to be involved in the goal-setting conversation too. Make sure they’re fully in alignment with what staff intends to do with the event. This conversation is a great place to involve some new leaders too, not just your formal or established leaders. Setting goals that match the needs of less visible members of your community is extra-vital if you are seeking to explore Community-Centric Fundraising principles, broaden your event audience beyond the usual suspects, or design the event to serve newer members of your community.
Beyond goal-setting, there are a few other important elements of event strategy:
Finding the right timing for your event within your annual calendar
Building staffing and volunteer support structures so your event planning process will be graceful and efficient
Setting bold but realistic goals around each of your revenue streams
Spend time laying out your plans for these BEFORE you begin booking venues and vendors!
In all these strategy topics and more, Synchronicity serves as a thought partner for our clients. Strategy work begins as soon as your event is a “glimmer in your eye” … which is a good reason to bring your event planner in the process at least six months before your event date, so we can help your team find alignment and start building strategically.
So to sum up: Strategy means that if you’ve ever wished there was a better way, there probably is, and we’ll find it. Let’s do a little work in advance so we can work smarter, not harder, for the absolute best possible results.
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