Organise a Local Event

As part of the role an MSYP you may be involved in organising or running an event locally. The following hints and tips are designed to help you with your planning and organisation of the event. 

Planning the event

First off you need to decide what the objective of the event is. What is it you are looking to do? Are you looking to consult with people? Inform them about the SYP or your campaign? 

• Who are your target audience? This will depend on what you are trying to get out of the day and will impact on the venue and time of your event. If your target is youth workers then you may be best to run this Monday to Friday 9-5, however if you are targeting young people then evenings and weekends would work better. 
• Choose your venue. Venues are an important element for any event. You will have a limited budget so this will impact on your choice, but think about what is most relevant for the audience you are looking to engage with. If it is young people then a school may not be the best venue as they associate this with learning, then again a youth club may not be the best venue for a formal presentation with councillors attending. 
• Find out what budget you have, however remember that you may be able to get things for free! Think about how people that you could approach and ask them to support your event ‘in kind’ – this means that they provide their service to you and don’t charge for it. They will look for their logo to be promoted or a thanks at your event. 

Once you have a budget, venue and audience it is time to promote your event. 

Again promotion will depend on who it is you are targeting. It may be that you write formal letter to invite councillors, or stick up posters around the local schools to inform young people about the event. It is best to use as many forms of promotion as you can. Various forms include: 

• Letters
• e-mails 
• Posters
• Social media event invites
• Presentations
• Word of mouth
• Local media, newspapers, radio etc
• The SYP

It is important to target the communication to the audience you are trying to attract. If you are looking to contact young people then newspapers may not be the most effective method, however social media and presentations at schools may be. 

Also think about who can help you to promote the event. Conduct a mapping exercise and see who you can ask to put up posters or inform others about your event for you. 

When contacting the media it is useful to produce a press release. This allows for you to provide the information that you want them to print, and get your key messages across. Remember that press releases can be cut so it may not be exactly what you want so try to keep it as short as you can to ensure more of your own information is in the document. 

A sample press release can be in the Resource Section of your eLearning system.

It is worthwhile to phone the local media to ask who the most appropriate person is to contact with the story, or ask your Support Worker if they have any friendly contacts. Local media are often looking for stories to print. 

You should also send out a press release after the event with images. This allows for more coverage of your work. 

Money money money! 

Let’s face it you may well need some money to help put your event on. You will need to take care of this and make sure that you don’t go over your budget. It is handy to have one person in charge of the money and a limited number of people able to spend it, without consent. This allows for a greater control over the budget. 

Often a Support Worker will hold the money, however that does not mean you should just forget about it. Find out how much you have and come up with a plan as to how you can spend it. Shop about for the best deal and as previously stated, ask to see if the organisation will support the event with in kind support. 

In order to budget effectively you should sit down and think about everything you will need to run your event. Include everything you can think of and split the total cost to smaller groupings e.g. we have £50 to spend on food, £150 on a venue etc. You should also include a min of 10% contingency; this will allow you to have a small amount of flexibility. 

Using a spreadsheet to record what you have spent under each heading is worthwhile doing. This allows for you to have a reference point for your budget. 

Receipts should be kept for all expenditure so that you can prove what was spent on what. 

If in doubt speak to your Support Worker for advice and support. 

Last but not least – let the SYP know what you have planned, we always like knowing what you‘re up to locally and we’ll also try and send you some resources to help make your event a success.