Event handover packs

If you are planning to run an event involving a number of people, then it is probably a really good idea to prepare a handover pack and prime someone else in your team to take over should the unforeseen happen. Something as simple (and unpleasant) as a nasty bout of flu might leave you out of action on or near the day, and it would be a shame to see all your efforts wasted because the other volunteers you are working with don’t feel confident to take the event on.

You’ll probably want to keep all your paperwork in one place anyway, so there is no need to create more work and a separate file for the handover pack, it’s just a case of being a little bit more thorough with the way you file and document things as you go along. Hopefully the handover pack will make your life easier too.

If the advice below fills you with dread, consider asking someone else in your team of volunteers to take responsibility for maintaining the pack. Some things you will have to update them with as you go along, but in fact having a second person involved provides added insurance.

Clearly event handover packs need to be a simple or complicated as the event itself, but as a rough guideline you may want to include:

A separate sheet of paper for each of the headings included in the ‘law and best practice’ section of the how2guide you have been referring to. Make a note of what you have done to comply with the legal and best practice criteria on each sheet and any additional issues you have identified (please let us know about these). Attach any licenses or insurance information to the relevant sheets.

A special note about risk assessments – these are recommended for nearly every type of event. If as a result of your risk assessment you have decided you need to take special precautions to keep people from harm, record these on a separate sheet (you can just cut and paste from the main body of the document if you are typing it out on a computer!). Make sure it is really easy to remember to do all the things you decided were important by creating a check list of precautions to be implemented.

Create a contacts sheet with name, telephone number, email address and any other relevant details of all the people and suppliers that are key to the events success (you may want to do this in Excel and print it out should you need to create a handover pack).

If you are feeling fastidious, create an email group of all the people on your list as you go along and call it ‘EVENT NAME handover’, so that you can send out one email to them all with the name and contact details of the person who is taking over. This way you can help prevent people contacting you while you lie in your sick bed.

Try to write lists of the equipment you will need, they will be handy for checking when you pack for the event and when you need to return things. Consider listing who they belong to, where they are being stored (prior to packing), and whether they are being hired, bought, loaned or donated.

If people are paying in advance, make sure you keep good records of who has paid what. Of course you will need to do this anyway, but if you use and shorthand or codes put a key on the page so that someone else will understand what they mean.

Keep copies of all the articles you have generated and a note of what was sent to whom so that people can send information to any media organisations that have not yet been contacted. This will also enable them to follow up after the event with news of what was raised, as this is a good time to ask people to make another donation for the cause.

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