Family events are the places where we can ALL meet together, inspire and learn from each other and reflect God's big, rich, diverse & beautiful family to the world.
The resources here are laid out to help explain the responsibilities involved in leading a Family event and the support you can expect to receive from the ST team. There are also links to useful documents for you to download, edit and use. If you need further help in any area, please contact who’d be delighted to help you.
Vision
The Stewards’ Trust has a vision of ‘disciples making disciples who transform the world’. How will this play out in your event? What would you particularly like to see God do? What has God given you a heart for? Starting with vision is really important and a great thing to get your team involved with.
The Stewards' Trust will
- communicate, elaborate and explain our vision for ‘disciples making disciples who transform the world’
- assist Hosts to work out how this vision works out in their context
Hosts will...
- commit to praying and listening to God to discern his heart and plan for their event
Resources
Communication
Good communication is key to the smooth running of any event. Making sure you have communicated clearly and concisely will ensure each stakeholder is well informed and keep them connected to the plans and vision for the event. Maintaining good communication with ST centrally will ensure you have access to all the support available as well as enabling consistency.
The Stewards' Trust will
- commit to getting to know new Hosts and building a working relationship
- meet with event Hosts after events to debrief
- develop efficient methods to support administration of events
- share resources and best practice to aid good communication
Hosts will...
- attend Hosts’ Meetings
- keep in touch with the ST with regard to how their event is developing.
- compile and send data after the event as necessary, including submitting a budget and forwarding attendance details
- communicate well with their host team, guests and the venue to facilitate their event
Planning
‘Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago’
Warren Buffett
Putting together a programme for your event and making it all happen requires careful planning and attention to detail. Planning ahead will benefit not only you but your helpers and guests as well. The time you spend investing in good planning will help prepare you and your team to be ready for every eventuality.
The Stewards' Trust will
- provide central support in talking through possible programmes & timelines to aid planning
- maintain a library of previous timetables from events
Hosts will...
- devise a planning schedule for their event
- prayerfully put together a programme of activities for all, identifying precise timings for these, working out how they affect the venue and the best way of communicating all of this to everyone.
Venue
Establishing and maintaining a good relationship with the place where your event will take place is absolutely crucial to its success. You’ll want to understand what facilities are avilable to you and what expectations the venue has of you as guests. Investing in building trust with the venue manager will make a big difference to your event.
The Stewards' Trust will
- manage any contractual relationship with a venue and develop and maintain a relationship with the venue manager or equivalent.
- hold legal responsibility for that contract centrally including any financial liability.
- ensure that Hosts have sight of and opportunity to input into any contract
- conduct a site risk assessment for all venues (see Health & Safety)
Hosts will...
work to build a good relationship with the venue manager and other venue staff
Finance
Events need to be carefully budgeted to make sure they pay for themselves. Use one of our sample proformas to help you plan and calculate guest fees to cover what you want to be able to do.
The Stewards' Trust will
- provide sample budget proforma if helpful
- facilitate admin to add volunteers to bank account mandates
- enable claim of gift aid for donations to the event
- pay/authorise large payments over £2000
Hosts will...
(These tasks could be delegated to a treasurer)
- create a budget and determine guest fees in order to ensure event will break even
- monitor and oversee finances to ensure wise stewardship
- have access to the event bank account to organise payments and repayment of expenses
- monitor and record donations to the event and share with ST central office
- provide summary accounts to ST after each event
Resources
Team
Building and looking after a God-focused team makes a huge difference to the success of any event.
You’ll need to think about your Host Team, Event Youth team and then all the other roles needed to make the event work.
The Stewards' Trust will
support you to think through what makes a good team and how to make the most of individual gifts
Hosts will...
- identify an administrator who will respond to queries and booking requests
- identify a treasurer who will be responsible for the event finances
- assemble a host team of people who understand your vision and can bring a range of relevant enthusiasms and practical skills.
- identify one member of the host team as the Designated Safeguarding Host (DSH)
re Youth team
- put together a team of volunteers to lead Youth and children’s programmes on their event.
- look after this team both practically and spiritually through communication and support before, during and after the event.
- ensure Safeguarding is a priority for this group
Safeguarding
Keeping everyone safe is a huge priority. This includes preventing harm from occurring on the event as well as knowing how to deal with reports of harm which are shared during it. Our Safeguarding Policy must be followed at all events. Our safeguarding responsibility now extends to all ages: to children and young people as well as adults who are, or could be, at risk of harm. This could be because of mental, physical or emotional incapacity or fragility.
The Stewards' Trust will
- maintain a clear and up to date policy
- provide a framework and support
- provide and/or pay for training where necessary
- ensure advice is readily available, before, during and after an event
- organise and administer a robust and thorough system for screening volunteers
- provide resources to help teams think through safeguarding on their event – our ‘Safe in your hands’ leaflet and a training video on key priorities for youth and family events.
- provide a hotline number to the Designated Safeguarding Officer (DSO) or Deputy DSO for any queries or concerns which arise on an event
- deal with any safeguarding matters which need to be followed up after the event is over
Hosts will...
- read and follow our Safeguarding Policy
- prioritise Safeguarding on the event
- identify a Designated Safeguarding Host (DSH) to oversee safeguarding throughout the event and inform the DSO who it is
- work with the DSH to ensure all volunteers are identified early and passed to our Safeguarding Administrator for screening
- support the DSH in the delivery of their duties e.g. ensuring good ratios of adults to children in groups
Compliance
Centrally supported admin and responsibilities to comply with legal and official guidelines – dull but essential. What are our responsibilities looking after data? How do we know what we’re insured for? Read on to get clued up!
The Stewards' Trust will
Re Insurance
- Maintain public liability insurance which will cover your event
- establish whether the venue carries public liability insurance and whether this benefits external users of the venue
- communicate what activities are covered by our ST insurance
Re Health & Safety
- Conduct a risk assessment for your venue based on site related risks
Re GDPR
- Regularly review our ST Data Protection Policy to ensure legal compliance
- gather and look after personal data securely on our database
- enable access to relevant data in order to facilitate the event
- store event data securely according to our policy
Re CCLI
- provide a licence and profile to enable use and projection of song words
Re complaints and concerns
- support hosts in their addressing of complaints and concerns
- maintain a Complaints Policy and provide structure to address more serious complaints which cannot be resolved by hosts
Hosts will...
Re Insurance
- ensure that all proposed activities are covered under insurance
Re Health & Safety
- carry out a risk assessment for any activities on the event
- follow the guidelines and procedures of the venue – eg to hold a fire drill if required
- communicate site and activity risks to guests and underline individual responsibility and parental responsibility for their own children
- include a general disclaimer in communication with guests
- communicate risks in welcome talk
Re GDPR
- process guest data carefully with attention to our policy – eg using Bcc where possible/not leaving printed data lying around/ensuring digital copies are password protected
- delete guest data from personal computers once the event is finished, especially medical data
- only circulate guest address lists beyond the host team with explicit consent of all guests. Ensure lists are not to be used for commercial purposes.
Re CCLI
- ensure songs which are printed/projected are recorded and reported properly. Copyright information should be displayed for each song
Re Complaints and Concerns
- address any complaints or concerns with openness and integrity
- share and pass on any unresolved issues to the ST Head of Family Events to enable official process to be carried out