By now, you've gone through the stage of contacting, but there is one more very important group you have to contact: your planning committee.
Why a Committee?
Pictures of various Find Your Sunshine Planning Committee members at the 2015 and 2016 concerts.
We've already addressed that you can't go through this process on your own and you shouldn't be afraid to ask for help. Creating a planning committee is one of the best ways to recruit help and have other opinions and ideas surrounding you. By getting all types of people with different strengths and connections, you immediately multiply your resources and have people to turn to when you're unsure or struggling.
A planning committee provides you with people to bounce ideas off of, a source of new and fresh ideas, and people to help market and spread the word. Surrounding yourself with all different types of people gives you sources for diverse ideas and perspectives, which will help elevate your event.
Define and Categorize
Firstly, you need do define what kind of committee you want and what you want out your committee. Do you just want a few extra hands to help out here and there, or do you want a group to help brainstorm and make important decisions? Figuring this out in the beginning of the process will help you determine how many people you need, what your meetings will look like, and what kind of people you'll want to recruit.
Think about your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to planning the event. Do your strengths lie in marketing or people skills? Then it is probably important to recruit people whose strengths are more in the smaller details and organization. Essentially, you need people to help balance you out and raise you up. Don't be afraid to reach out to all different kinds of people, it'll help you in the long run and give you lots of new perspectives you never thought of. For example, it is important to not only have organized and analytic thinkers, but also people who are more artistic and tend to think outside of the box.
Also, it is important to keep in mind what kind of people you are asking. If you need strong committee members who will be dedicated and work hard, look at the leaders around you. Maybe ask a class president, or just someone you know that has a track record of being a good and effective leader. If you just ask your closest friends, you maybe less productive and find that those people are not necessarily the best to work on a committee with. You should also find people that are also passionate about your cause. This will help motivate them and give their work a purpose.
In addition, even if you want to ask the smartest, kindest, and hard working people, you have to keep in mind their schedule. Even if you want someone great on your committee, they won't be much help if they can't actually go to meetings or participate. You can avoid this by establishing the level commitment towards the beginning, and explaining what it means to be an active and dedicated committee member.
In my experience, I have had the most success when I have a concise group of people from different schools, with different strengths, different personalities, and different connections. They all bring something new and exciting to the table that makes the planning process exciting and enjoyable, even after doing it for multiple years. Also, personally, I tend to overthink and overanalyze pretty much everything. My committee was essential to helping me make decisions and giving me input that made me feel confident in what I was doing. In addition, they all knew me personally and understood how much my aunt meant to me and how important the cause is, so they were always dedicated and passionate about the work they were doing, which directly translated into the success of the event.
Image of members of the Find Your Sunshine Planning Committee (from left to right: Dylan Bishop, Sterling Rosenthal, and Jonathan Spiegel) helping out at the raffle at the 2016 concert.
Recruit and Establish Roles
Now that you have defined the purpose of your committee and figured out what kind of people you want to work with, you an start recruiting your members. Reach out to them and, like I previously stated, make sure to establish the level commitment required. Once you have contacted everyone and the group is finalized, you can distribute the roles among the group.
The benefit of establishing roles is that you can divide the workload and utilize people's strengths. For example, if someone on your committee is extremely organized, they can be the note taker, if someone is tech savvy, they can work on the website or social media presence, if someone is artistic or has good people skills, they should probably work on marketing. Giving these roles helps keep your team members responsible and presents a clear agenda. For example, I put one of my committee members, Eve Baliff (pictured below), in charge of putting together a photo area for the 2016 Concert. Since I knew she was creative, I played to her strengths and she created a picture-perfect station that was used throughout the entire event.
A picture of Find Your Sunshine Planning Committee member Eve Baliff (second from the left) and her friends taking a picture at the photo area she put together.
If you are unsure of what positions to have, start thinking about what you need. The roles might be very event specific. For example, when planning the benefit concert, I knew I would need help keeping track of and contacting all the musicians I'd be working with. Therefore, I appointed two members to be "Musician Handlers." That job was specific towards my event, and wouldn't exactly fit the criteria for other events. For a different type of event, like an auction, you might want to put someone in charge of contacting the providers of the auction items. Or, if you are planning a carnival, you might want to put people in charge of thinking of booths and games. It all depends on what event you are planning and what kind of help you'll need.
As always, if you have ANY questions, please feel free to email me at find.your.sunshine.concert@gmail.com and send them my way!