Good Samaritan Episcopal Church

It's exciting that we're getting bigger every day. Our new strategic plan means that we may have more new events to host on the church campus. When Hanna Hake, Parish Life Director, was here we set up a system where we planned out our church calendar a year in advance, making sure that we didn't have major events butting into other major events.

We got the calendaring in advance (mostly) down and now we're moving to the next step. Some of us are better organizers than others, so we've developed a tool to help everyone plan their events and get all the help and resources in plenty of time and not scrambling at the last minute to get the word out or get the AV set up.

We came up with the internal event planning form. (Actually, we got it from St. Michael's by the Sea and modified it to work for us.) This is for events expecting 20 or more people. All events, no matter what size, should be booked through our Admin Support Person. If you need special set up or promotion, then it wouldn't hurt to fill out this form so we can make sure that the resources you want are available.

Let's see how it works.

You are the chair of an event that's either already been scheduled (and you haven't turned in a form) or will be scheduled for next year, or you've come up with this really good idea that you want to do in the next year or so.

The first thing to do is to take your event idea to a ministry (like Community Life) and get the go-ahead from them. The ministry can help you through sharing experience and people to assist in putting on the event.

But let's say you missed the window for getting it onto next year's calendar (deadline June 1st) and you don't want to wait a whole 'nother year to do this idea.

Your ministry chair will give you the internal event planning form to fill out. It probably wouldn't hurt to check with Verdery to see whether or not the space you need is available at the time before putting a lot of work into planning the event. However, if you missed the calendaring window for the following year, the booking is tentative until the completed form is turned in.

So you get this 5 page form and freak out. Fear not, you only need to fill out and turn in the first two pages. The next two pages are helps for you as you plan out your event, and the last page is an evaluation form so you can record what you'd like to do differently next time. Saves a lot of scratching of heads a year later and looking at each other going: "I know there was something..." (I speak from personal experience here!)

If you get stuck on any of the questions on the first two pages, call Leanne or Verdery.

Depending on how you fill out the form, you'll get to have more conversations with the staff: you'll speak to Leanne to plan out and review deadlines for promotion materials, and you'll speak to Dave about set-up and layout.

The goals of this event planning form are: to make sure that things don't slip through the cracks; that the event team and the staff are working and communicating together; and we put on quality events we can be proud of.

(this was first published in the March 2012 tidings as "Got A Great Idea for An Event?" by Leanne Shawler, Communications Director, and has been modified slightly to be more timeless.)
The form below is for members of Good Samaritan only. If you are not a member of the church, then please either call the church or use the rental form.

The form is in PDF format and cannot currently be filled out electronically.

The Internal Event Planning form is meant for groups of more than 20 people.

The first two pages need to be filled out, signed and returned to the church office before an event is confirmed on the church calendar.

The next two pages are guidelines for planning an event, particularly ones with speakers. We hope you find it to be a useful resource.

The last page is an evaluation form for you to use after the event to record what did and didn't work last time.

[ Download/View good_sam-event-planning-form.pdf ]

Thanks to St. Michael's-by-the-Sea for the original form.