Putting on Special Events

Why bother?

Faced with meagre human and financial resources, it is not easy for sport and recreation organisations to create and successfully conduct special events. Volunteers have limited time and are easily burned out by the extra work that special events require. As a result, there is a tendency for organisations to move only slowly in the creation and/or improvement of special events.

A special event is an event which is larger, more important, more complex than normally held by the organisation. For example, a special event might be when a sporting club holds a state or regional championship.

But every few years, there does come a time when an opportunity to stage a special event arises, and it's just too good to miss.

Although there is much work involved, special events provide significant benefits. Special events are an opportunity to:

Acquire funding from government agencies or parent bodies to improve facilities and/or equipment
Improve/upgrade facilities
Raise the profile and standing of the organisation in the community. Hopefully this has a flow-on effect in membership numbers in the following year(s).
Recruit and train more people as event officials or helpers.
Raise money through selling of food, merchandise, and raffle tickets while the event is being staged.
Attract (and hopefully keep) new sponsors
Motivate own club/organisation athletes/players to achieve higher levels of performance as they will be competing in front of a home crowd.

Special events are a catalyst for improvement in the organsiation and help to focus the efforts of organisation personnel to achieve medium and long-term goals.

There is often a greater sense of satisfaction, achievement and pride within the organisation as a result of successfully staging a special event.

Making events special

There are a number of key strategies to take to ensure that your special event is indeed special:

Get a team of people together and start early with your planning e.g. a year ahead. In the early stages,your planning needs to include a breakdown of the major tasks that need to be done. As time goes by, your list of tasks can be increasingly refined and hopefully no task is left out.
Conduct regular meetings of your team of people e.g. monthly, until you get to the last four weeks and then weekly. Keep minutes of meetings and distribute as soon as possible after the meeting so that people sare reminded of the tasks they have offered to do.
Allocate areas of responsibility to different individuals. Not everyone will do an excellent job, but in total much more will be done than you could do on your own.
Envisage how you want the competition to look visually. What are all the extras that might make the event environment look really nice. Your list might include marquee tents, flags, signs and other decorations. You may need to smarten up the arena, whether inside or outside by painting, fixing, and/ or cleaning. If the arena is outside, some landscaping, gardening or turf imrpovement may be required. All of these things can be done relatively painlessly if tasks are set about early. People will enjoy doing these tasks. However if left too late they probably will not happen at all.
Investigate what equipment you need for the event early. Give yourself several months to procur equipment. You need to research what equipment you need, suppliers, costs, and delivery times. You don't want to be sweating on teh arrival of equipment a few days before the event starts. Equipment needed might include sound systems, catering equipment as well as specific equipment needed for the event activities.
Promote, promote, promote! Events are special when there are lot's of people to watch and participate. In your planning, you need to start early on devising strategies to promote your event. It is important NOT to rely on just one or two strategies. Promotion is not about a few communications to yoru intended audience and hope that people will remember. It is entirely necessary to keep up a stream of communications and to use a variety of different media to carry the messages you want to deliver.