Program Planning Worksheet

Introduction

These instructions relate to the Program Planning worksheet for Rotary clubs.  Rotary International is encouraging clubs to be active in the community, conduct regular meetings, and to develop strong relationships through fellowship.  

The worksheet was developed to help a club with activity planning.  It provides a single worksheet to gather all club activities and District activities involving club members in a single location.  The sheet assists with the process of identifying, planning, and communicating activities.  The sheet compliments club communications tools like the website and social media services.

Background

The Rotary Club of Toronto Sunrise and District 7070 have undertaking a project to improve collaboration and communication using free internet services such as Google Drive and Google Sheets.  Through this project simplified process solutions, including training and templates are being delivered to help clubs in the district, and are offered to assist other clubs around the world.

Worksheet

Getting Started

The Program Planning Worksheet is a Google Sheet.  Google Sheets are similar in function to Microsoft Excel documents.  Google Sheets are best accessed through Google (for consumer) services.  Business users may be familiar with Google Apps for Work services, which offer similar functionality.  

If you have not registered for Google services, you need to start by creating a Google account.  You may register for a new google email, or you may register your existing email.  Once you have completed the process, you will be able to access Google Drive, an area in the Google service cloud for storing and sharing files.

Make A Copy

Once you have established Google services, you may follow the link to the Program Planning template (above).  You will be prompted to "Make a copy" of the document.  Enter a new document name, perhaps including your club name and the rotary year.  Select OK to proceed.  Your personal copy of the worksheet will now be stored in your personal Google Drive.

Overview of the Worksheet

Information in the worksheet is grouped by month with the Rotary Theme for the month included in the header line (example below)

Club meeting events shown on a light green background (example below)

Other club events are show on a light blue background (example below)

Steps for Creating a New Event

To add a new event in the worksheet, locate the month and week where you’d like to insert the event.  Ideally your should keep program events in increasing order of date so that you can easily scan the information.  Select a row directly above the location where you would like to insert a new event.  Click on the row number on the left to select the full row.  Now select menu item Insert and Row Below to insert a blank row in the worksheet.  In the example below, row 46 was selected, and new row 47 was added.

Select an existing event to copy the information into the new blank row, to obtain the correct formating.  In this case row 46 was selected, menu Edit and Copy was selected, and cell A47 was selected, followed by menu Edit and Paste.

Now the content of the new row can be edited to reflect the new event.  Follow the Steps for Event Planning below as you work through the planning process.

Steps for Event Planning

Events, such as club meetings which are planned, but don’t yet have a speaker have the speaker area highlighted in RED, and the Program Planning Status as “Unplanned” with a RED background.

When the a speaker has been identified, enter the name in the Speaker column.  The background colour (RED) will return to normal when you leave the cell.  Select and change the Program Planning Status to “Idea” if the speaker is a suggestion.  The Speaker name and Program Planning Status will change to ORANGE, indicating that this event is not fully planned.

When the speaker has been contacted, the Program Planning Status is changed to “Proposed”.  The Speaker colour will be removed and the Program Planning Status will change to YELLOW.

When the speaker has accepted the event, the Program Planning Status is changed to “Booked”.  The Program Planning Status remains YELLOW, and in addition, the ClubRunner status is changed to YELLOW, indicating that the club marketing prime show now publish the event information on the club website.

Once all preparations for the speaker have been finalized, the Program Planning Status is changed to “Prepared”, and the Program Planning Status will change to GREEN.

Steps for Event Publishing

Continuing from the example above, the club marketing prime will create the event in the club website, in this case ClubRunner.  When this is completed, the ClubRunner status is changed to “Notice Published”, and the ClubRunner Status colour will be removed.

If you would like to track Social Media work activities, the Social Media Status column may be used in the same way as the ClubRunner status column.  In case your club does not separately publish events in social media, the Social Media Status is not automatically coloured when an event moves to the “Booked” or “Prepared” status.  When information has been published to social media, the Social Media Status may be changed to “Notice Published”.

Steps for Event Publishing

Following an event, the Program Planning Status is changed to “Completed”.  If your club tracks ClubRunner and/or Social Media communications, the Status is changed to “Story Published”.

Tips and Tricks for Event Planning

The worksheet should be populated with all your club meetings for the entire year as early as possible.  This will ensure that open Speaker slots are identified early.

The worksheet should be populated with all the club weekly community initiatives, fellowship, and District events, ideally for the entire year.  This will ensure that a long range planning framework is available to guide the year, with a minimum of regular maintenance.

Program planning is an activity which can now be easily shared amongst club members, or taken on by a “pod” if your club uses this planning process.

Club planning, communications, and social media marketing can be coordinated using the worksheet.  As your club gets this started, members may need to communicate and coordinate their activities separately from the worksheet.  However, as the process becomes clearly, the sheet will guide each role to the areas which need their attention.  A summary chart at the top of the worksheet entitled “Communications Status”, identifies the number of ClubRunner events needing a Notice to be Published, and how many events require Social Media notice publishing.

Support / Feedback

Please direct any questions or feedback concerning the worksheet to our club email
( rotarytorontosunrise@gmail.com ).