In almost any season of the Church Year, there are special events or holiday services—from summer block parties to midweek Lenten services to children’s Christmas programs. Managing these types of church holiday events can be an overwhelming task for any church staff, especially if you’re responsible for all facets of an event.
But church holiday event management doesn’t have to be a headache. By utilizing a church management system, you can easily keep track of all parts of your special event, from initial planning to post-event debriefing.
Volunteers are a critical part of any church holiday event, but it can be a challenge to keep track of people’s skills, gifts, and talents—in addition to who has confirmed their availability for a specific event. With a church management system such as Church360°, you can easily tag users with specific skills, as well as note what role they’ll serve the day of the event. This ensures that you have all your bases covered and can rest easy the day of the event!
In the preparation stage of your special event, you’ve likely been budget planning to figure out the cost of your event. Whether you have to buy special supplies or allocate money toward food, you’ll need to ensure you set a budget and keep track of spending throughout the whole process.
Additionally, you can track your giving from this special event. Easily keep track of all gifts, whether given to a special fund online or as a freewill donation at the event. By simplifying your offering entry for your church volunteers and staff, you’ll ensure you have an accurate record of giving.
At the event, you’ll likely want to take note of who attended or, at the very least, how many people attended. If your event is primarily focused on members of your church, you can easily track who attended in your church management system. But you can also simply track numbers of attendees, which is helpful if your event is focused on outreach.
Even though numbers aren’t everything, tracking attendance for events can be a helpful gauge as to whether your event met your goals or was successful. If a special holiday event is poorly attended, you can revisit whether it’s worthwhile to continue, you should rethink the format, or your ministry could sunset the event to save time and money.
Lastly, you can take detailed notes on your event to look back on next year. Many churches focus all their energy on planning the event, and then fail to take a moment afterwards to reflect on the successes and challenges of the day.
But an essential part of any church holiday event management strategy should be to debrief with your team immediately afterward—either after teardown or within the next day or so. Take detailed notes of what challenges your team faced (maybe you need more volunteers), note feedback from attendees (vegetarian food options were highly requested), and gauge the success of your event based on your goals (start promotion earlier in the year).
Make event planning and volunteer coordination a breeze with the new event forms feature in Church360° Members, CTS’s membership software.