Annual Calendar
Creating an annual calendar for your club’s activities will help you to plan ahead. You can refer to it at each meeting so that you can plan ahead, rather than organising events at the last minute. You’ll probably want to create the calendar in Term 4 for the following year, to make sure you’re ready for those early Term 1 events, such as a social event for new families.
Calendar format
- You could use a printed calendar or diary and simply write in the events. This has the advantage of simplicity, but can only be used by one person at a time.
- You could lay out a simple date list in Word and share in digital format or print.
- Online calendars such as Google Calendar can be shared and used by many people. This can be useful, but consider if the relevant people will be comfortable using such a calendar.
What to include
- Club meetings, including AGM
- Use past experience to put in dates for advance planning. E.g. if you know that it takes six months to plan the School Fete, count back six months from the fete date and schedule in the first planning meeting.
- All regular Club activities e.g. New Families BBQ, Mothers / Fathers Day Stall, Education Week (late May/early June), Fun Run, Fete etc
- Reminders about communications, e.g. target date to distribute a welcome flyer for new families, deadlines for school newsletter and local papers.
- Other relevant dates you might want to share with your school community, e.g. tertiary Open Days.
- And of course Parents Victoria events such as our Annual Conference and Parent Forums!
Finding the best meeting time
Some people prefer daytime meetings, some need an evening timeslot. Choosing a meeting time that suits most people can be difficult.
A useful tool for working this out is Doodle Poll. You put in a list of date/time options, send the Poll to your group via email, and people tick the times they can attend. Doodle tabulates how many people ticked each time, and it’s easy to see which one suits the most people.
