Creating an event calendar for the year

Hello everyone and welcome back after a long break! Malaysia being the land of public holidays...it has been pretty much one long holiday since December, hasn't it! :-)

I'm sure many small non-profit organisations who are volunteer-run like ours, are quite glad that the holidays are over - so that we can get back to focusing on running activities with the help of our volunteers :-)

So, looking at key tasks to tackle for the new year... perhaps one of the first things to be done is to create an event calendar for the year. This calendar could include dates and deadlines associated with planned events, tax and accounting audits, bill payment dates, membership register review & updates, compliance and reporting obligations, meetings with stakeholders, and other activities.

Such a calendar can prove to be a very useful tool for the organisation, especially when there are multiple stakeholders working on various projects.

A couple of easy steps to follow:

1.Create a google calendar for your organisation. If you have a Gmail account in your organisation's name, you'll already have a calendar function built in, which is linked to this account.

2.Select someone to be the overall manager of the calendar. This person should be tasked with inputting data when needed, reviewing the calendar periodically and sending out reminders when needed.

3.Identify key project leaders amongst the volunteers who are tasked with specific projects, tasks or events and give them access to the Gmail account so that they too, can input data directly into the calendar.

4. Create a simple process flow to manage the inputting of data and supervision.

One of the advantages of  having such a calendar set up, is that any office bearer or member who logs in can view the years' calendar at a glance, and schedule new dates.

And, when the time comes to create a calendar of the years' past events and activities for the executive committee's report during the annual general meeting, all the events and dates will super-easy to compile :-)

Hope the above tips will be of some help in getting your organisation's yearly calendar up and running! :-)

Comments, questions or requests to cover particular topics, do email me at spiralcraft1701@gmail.com.