Planning and coordinating a community event can be a lot of work, but it’s an excellent way to build community and create a sense of togetherness. Before assembling your committee and planning your event, you’ll need to consider a few things. Let’s first dive into the importance of community events.
Importance of Holding Community Events
Let’s quickly discuss the importance of community events.
Bring Your Community Together
Engaging your community is all about developing strong relationships, and community events are an excellent opportunity to bring people from all walks of life together. An organized community event, whether it’s high-profile or low-key, can bring a diverse group of people together. It unites people through a single objective or cause. Community events assist in raising local awareness and function as a vehicle for change.
Establish Town Identity
Having a distinct local identity is critical, especially in smaller towns. Smaller towns may use community events to bring their citizens together and preserve old traditions while creating new ones. Community events may also attract tourists by showcasing what makes the town so special, which can generate a strong feeling of community pride. A sense of communal pride also urges people to take better care of their surroundings.
Unique or significant community events can put little communities “on the map,” establish town identity and generate a sense of shared history. As a result, community events give their hosting area a distinct character and aesthetic that people may unite around.
Create New Business Opportunities
Community events can be an excellent way for businesses to get their name out there and expand their customer base. Hosting a community event allows companies to reach potential customers who might not ordinarily visit their site or shop at their store. Additionally, businesses can develop new relationships with other companies and organizations by sponsoring or participating in community events.
Community events present an excellent opportunity to boost the economy of a city or town. When guests come from distant regions to participate in larger events, local businesses might see some benefits. Furthermore, community activities may draw in business from other towns, creating additional cash that benefits your community.
How to Plan a Community Event
Planning a community event can be daunting, but with a bit of preparation and help from professional services, it can be a breeze. When you follow these tips, you can successfully host your next community event.
Determine Your Event Type
The first step in planning a community event is to define the event’s goal and the event type. Determine your goal and explore community event ideas to help you achieve it. The success of your community event depends on the type of event you choose and the goal you hope to achieve.
Brainstorm community event ideas that are relevant to your goal and target audience — here is a list to spark some inspiration:
- Fundraising and charity events: A donation drive, charity concert or silent auction are excellent community event ideas for fundraising and charity community events.
- Social and cultural development Events: Event ideas that help with social and cultural development include cultural food festivals and heritage carnivals.
- Economic growth events: You can organize monthly regional mega-markets and community festivals to drive economic growth.
- Positive change events: To help promote positive change in your community you can arrange community cleanup events, offer skill development or community training events or orchestrate community gardening days.
- Bond-building events: Try hosting a community field day, sharing a meal with community members or even organizing an open mic night to help your community build more bonds.
Explore some of the newest event trends for 2023 for more inspiration.
Start With the Fundamentals
Once you’ve determined your event type, you can start choosing the fundamentals like the date, location and vendors you’ll need to make your community event unforgettable. Let’s start by setting a date. The date for a recurring event might already be preset. However, with new events, there are a few things to consider:
- Planning period: Give yourself enough time to plan. Depending on the event type, you’ll want to have at least 4-6 months available.
- Holidays: Be aware of any public, statutory and religious holidays so you don’t book the event during a holiday.
Once you’ve decided on a date, you should reserve your venue. Your event must have a date and venue before you can begin promoting, so reserve a venue as quickly as possible. There are several factors to consider when acquiring a place for a public community event — like accessibility, capacity, parking, insurance, security and audio and visual (AV) of the venue.
Next, you must determine the vendors you wish to hire and check their availability and pricing. Secure contracts with them once you’ve determined that their cost works inside your budget. Confirm your vendors’ arrival timings and duties prior to the event. Vendors you may hire include the following:
- Food and beverage providers
- Entertainment and music
- Decor professionals and florists
- Transportation experts
Hire a Professional
Hiring an event planner may seem like an additional expense you can skip to stick to your event budget. However, the opposite is true. A professional event planner may save you a significant amount of money. Before you organize and manage an event on your own, understand that the total cost you wind up spending may surpass what you would have spent had you hired a professional. An event planner has knowledge, expertise and access to promotions and discounts.
Professional event planners can take away the stress of event planning and ensure every detail is covered. They can use their expertise and professional network to help you choose the best vendors. Event planners maintain a network of suppliers and vendors with whom they routinely work, including venues, florists and caterers.
Advertise and Promote
Even with the best speaker or entertainment lineup, you’ll need a marketing strategy to bring people to the community event. You must spread the word ahead of time so your community can plan for your event.
You want to ensure that the correct individuals know your event — your target audience. Use information about your audience when deciding how to market your event. You may promote the event online via event listing websites or social media, or you might hang posters around your neighborhood and inside local businesses.
Planning a community event takes time, and promoting one is a challenge in itself. A professional event planner can assist you with advertising and promoting your community event. An event planner saves you time, allowing you to focus on high-priority tasks. You also get peace of mind knowing that a professional is handling your event’s marketing.
Gather Sponsorships
Partnerships and sponsors can help you save money and increase potential engagement. When you include other individuals or groups in your event, they can help spread the news and ensure the event’s success — after all, the more, the merrier, right? If you want businesses to sponsor your event, remember that they will be more willing to do so if they see a clear advantage to them. Consider the following when gathering sponsorships:
- Seek business sponsorship: Sponsors can help fund a portion of the event. Sponsors can include major businesses that can provide a prize or local businesses that can provide products or services for the event.
- Partner with community organizations: Collaborate with community groups that can provide a space or support with event planning or staffing.
Contact Treadway Events to Help Bring Your Community Together
Create memorable and engaging community events with Treadway Events. We’ll work with you to plan an event that will have your visitors eagerly anticipating the next one. Treadway Events provides complete event planning services in Oregon, Washington, Arizona and more. We work hard to realize the picture you have in your thoughts. We will organize your event, plan the design and provide production services to ensure its success.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can assist your business, please contact us online today!
