Event Organizing 101 — SafeBAE Club Hub

Define your goals and build your timeline

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Who is your intended audience? Determine your audience for your event. Some examples of an audience include high school students, college students, teachers, or members of your community. Ensure that your material is relevant to your audience.
Why do you want to host this event? Identify what kind of event you’d like to host and what you’d like to accomplish by hosting this event. Event goals may be to educate students, recruit new members, or even raise awareness!
When do you want to host this event? Choose a day for your event. It may be helpful to meet with your chapter to brainstorm potential dates.
What do you need to do before you host your event? This will be unique for each SafeBAE chapter. We suggest reaching out to your school’s adult allies to see if there are any steps you need to take to get your event approved by administration. For some students, this may look like filling out paperwork with your chapter’s advisor. Keep in mind that some schools may need documents within a certain time frame!

Tool

Still not sure what to host? Take the Find Your Next Event quiz.

Now that you have thought about your audience, your goal, and roughly when you’d like to host, the quiz can help you decide what your event should actually be. It asks a few quick questions — what kind of action you’d like to organize, your intended audience, your budget, how large an event you’re imagining, what time of year you’re thinking, and how much administrative and peer support you have.

Based on your answers, it will show you events from our Awareness Event Library that fit your chapter’s situation, so you aren’t choosing something you don’t have the time or support to pull off. If you aren’t sure about your budget or your level of support yet, that’s okay — the next section will help you figure those out, and you can always come back and take the quiz again.

Take the quiz

Establish your support and identify your resources

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Identify who your adult allies are. It may be helpful to meet with your chapter’s leaders and create a list of potential adult allies who can support event planning. Your chapter’s advisor is a good place to start!
Think about your budget. Does your chapter have a budget? Many schools will provide student organizations with a small amount of funding. If not, we suggest scheduling a meeting with your school’s administrators and exploring ways that your school can support your chapter.
Collaborate with other organizations. You can invite other school clubs or community resources to support your event in different ways. If you decide to work with another organization, make sure to acknowledge their support.
Consider fundraising or accepting donations. Think about hosting a fundraiser to help with funding your event. Check out our Awareness Events tab for fundraising ideas!

Reserve your space

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Choose a location. You can either host your event on your school’s campus or off-campus. If your chapter decides to have an event off-campus, there may be additional steps to take. Check in with your advisor once you have chosen a location!
Determine if this location is optimal. Ensure that your location is suited for your audience and the type of event you’d like to host. It may be helpful to host potential events on your campus’s “hot spots”.
Make sure that your event is accessible and inclusive. Is your event in a location that is accessible to people with disabilities? Identify if your chosen location has elevators, ramps, or other accessibility features.

Promote your event and plan how it will run

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Create your advertisements. Think about the forms of advertising that you’d like to use. You can choose to make graphics, posters, TikToks, etc.
Post on your chapter’s social media. This is a good place to reach students digitally. If your school has an Instagram page, be sure to ask if they would be interested in co-authoring an Instagram post or reposting your event posts. By doing so, more students will see your event graphics. Make sure to tag @safe_bae!
Create a run of show. We suggest creating a run of show, especially for large or complex events. This will help you get a good idea of how your event will run and iron out the details. Start by mapping out exactly what should happen during your event and who will be helping with each task. If you need any support creating a run of show, don’t be afraid to schedule a meeting with the SafeBAE team!

What’s next

Planning more than one event? Use the Calendar of Engagement.

Once you’ve organized one event, the next step is planning your whole year. The Calendar of Engagement lets you browse the same events from the quiz and our Awareness Event Library, add ideas of your own, and place them on a calendar so your chapter can map out its full year ahead of time.

It is much easier to plan around national awareness dates — and around your school’s testing weeks, breaks, and busy seasons — when you can see everything together. We suggest sitting down with your chapter and your advisor near the start of the school year to fill it in.

Open the Calendar of Engagement