Humans are social creatures; we live in communities that work together to ensure that life chugs on smoothly. We benefit a lot from our cooperation with others, allowing us to focus on our strengths and using them to benefit the wider community.
Community projects and events are vital in promoting a more tightly-bound community and bringing people together.
If you would like to give back and organise a community project, I salute you! However, it can be difficult to arrange the details and logistics of such events as art exhibitions, bake sales, park runs, and the like when many people are involved.
Below are five tips that may be useful for you to help put together and run your community project effectively.
Project Choice: Setting Realistic Goals
When planning a community project, it is essential that the scope of the project is realistic and practical. It is also ideal for your prospective project to address existing issues or problems that your community is facing.
Basing your project on this will ensure that members of your community will be interested and invested in participating. It also helps to prevent you from overreaching and trying to achieve impossible goals.
Being goal-oriented can keep you on track and settle any challenges as and when they arise.
Plan Development and Leadership
Once you have your project idea, it is time to develop a plan for it. To do so, you may require the help of an executive committee. Leadership is vital in any and every organisation, regardless of size.
Your community project will benefit greatly from leadership that has some training in project management or some experience in running projects and managing teams and events. As such, you should keep this in mind when putting together your management team.
The right people will be able to adapt quickly to changes from start to finish and help to make your project a success in the face of various difficulties.
It is also a good idea to come up with an organisational chart or chain of command to prevent clashes of interest or leaders going head to head with each other. Once you have a timeline, you are equipped with the bare necessities to get your project going.
Team Building
Next, you need to get the members of your community involved. They will be making up the bulk of the workforce to run your project.
Once you have a team assembled, it is vital that each and every one of them are conscious and clear on the purpose of the project and what jobs and tasks unique individuals are responsible for.
Briefing sessions and ice-breaking activities may be the best way to disseminate information and also promote cooperation within your team.
Resources: Raising Money and Budgeting
Before your ideas can become a reality, you first need the resources and means to make them come to life. The money will be required for such things as flyers, venue booking, food and others.
Determining how much you need and how to use that money once you have it is a challenging but essential part of planning. You can raise money among your community through donations or by petitioning businesses for sponsorship.
Once you have obtained your financial resources, make sure that you are transparent with the money and follow the budget as strictly as possible.
Publicity
Even if you have already gotten everything ready to go, you must never forget one of the most critical factors of a successful community event: Publicity. No amount of preparation is complete or will be enough to garner success if no one knows about your project.
Advertising on social media may be the best way to go in this period of technological fluency.
Still, you should consider more down to earth methods of spreading the news about your project to gain a closer kinship with the people to be involved.
The people you are targeting may not be privileged enough to have these means of contact and communication. This is why knowing your target audience and keeping your goal in mind is imperative. From there, your project is on its way to accomplishment.