How our Regional Event Management Training Program transforms events

*THIS* is exactly what I wanted to achieve when I first had the idea of rEVENTS Academy years ago...

After a decade of helping regional event committees one-on-one, I developed rEVENTS Academy as an affordable way for event organisers to learn how to run their events more efficiently (with less work) and to get better outcomes from their events (whatever their goals for their event).

The following email came from a participant in our 7-week Intensive event management training program talking about the positive impact the program was having on her and her event:

Hi Linda and the rEVENTS Academy team,

I am only midway through Lesson 1 of Module 3, but from the get-go, even just reading the schedule of modules covered in this program, I knew we had struck gold.

I had no idea how deep that vein was though.

I know this will be lengthy, and I apologise for that, but I want to give you some perspective as to the difference what you have created is making to the long term sustainability of our festival.

At the end of 2017 I joined the Festival Committee as the go-between the committee of our local art gallery (of which I was a member) and the festival as there was to be an art exhibition included in the festival. At the first meeting I attended, the report of the review of the 2016 festival was tabled. It took the committee 3 meetings (months) to decide on the name of the festival.

At the AGM in April 2018, I stepped into the Secretary's role because it drove me nuts that things were so unorganised. The President had an enormous amount of passion for the community, but lacked the ability to communicate effectively. The Treasurer I learned along the ride knew less about the Treasurer's role than I did (and I had absolutely no experience at organising events or being on a management committee prior to then - Google was my one and only friend).

From April to September 2018 you can imagine the absolute nightmare it was to organise the festival. We had a marketing team to help us (fortunately!), although even that took time to proof websites, and set up all the online applications and I was also the social media back up.

We had committee members who were of the opinion that the whole committee needed to make decisions yet they weren't available for meetings most of the time.

When questioned about free tickets that had been promised to all sponsors of one event I was told you had to spend money to make money (good point, but most of these sponsors had contributed less than the cost of the tickets). And, we had $20,000 in grant money which had already been spent before we'd begun to organise the event.

These are just two examples of the roadblocks we had to traverse.

It was a hell of a rollercoaster with the President and myself feeling ill with worry for most of the ride that we were going to bankrupt the town.

It was a success though, and we ended with money in the bank to put towards the next festival, and much positive feedback from our local community; we even took out the Australia Day Award for our region.

When I stepped in as Secretary I had made it clear that I would only serve on the committee for one year as my mother had Alzheimers (undiagnosed at that stage, but our family knew). At the next AGM I resigned.

I tried to hand over as much information to the next committee as I had gathered. I gave them a list of things I thought imperative they address in the 'off year' of our biennial event, including strategic planning, spreading the load by having co-ordinators take on operational roles, and updating our Constitution.

In January 2020, although not on the committee, I started helping write grants for the new committee who I discovered had spent the better part of 7 months getting excited about the events that would be on the program. The less sexy side of event management had not been touched, although they did at least set up Dropbox. This is not a criticism of these committee members, just a reflection of volunteer time (minimal) and skills (lacking) to undertake managing an event.

I then got swallowed up trying to help them by developing a basic planning document, stakeholder database, updating the Constitution, developing the sponsor prospectus as well as writing grants. By May I was back on board as Treasurer (thinking that would be the least time-consuming job - I was so wrong).

And then Council sent the email that has given me so much hope for the future of this festival... an invitation to apply for your pilot program.

What you are teaching is exactly what I have been looking for (and have spent many, many hours googling to learn - and hadn't even scratched the surface).

I truly believe the festival has the bones to become a sustainable event that occurs annually. And that, in turn, will lead to economic and social benefits so desperately needed here as in other regional towns.

What prompted me to write this is your comment, Linda, that volunteers are more likely to come on board if they know the committee is organised. I know we have a number of people of that younger generation (25-45s) that have the skills (and stamina) to help. They have been, rightfully, afraid to commit... until now. The conversation I had today with a young local woman about the Post Event Co-ordination position started with "Hi Jo, I got your message, I'm going to have to say no," and finished with "Wow... actually, that sounds really interesting.

What you have created is already positively influencing many people's lives.

So, kudos, and thank you all.