What? | Goals and possibilities

Questions in this section

• What do I want to accomplish? 
• How does this event contribute strategically to the change I want to see? 
• What are the possibilities of my online event?

---

An online event should be relevant to your organisational strategic plan, long term goals and theory of change, advance your mission and lead to more impact. Having a clear goal for your online event will help you in the approach to the overall process of planning, monitoring and measuring the success of your event. A clear goal will especially help you in your choice of format, content, technology and key roles involved in design and implementation. From our experience, it’s best to focus on 2 - 3 goals, maximum.

Ask yourself these questions before making a decision:

• What do I want to accomplish and where do I expect to land?
• How does this event contribute strategically to the change I want to see?

Here is a provisional list of some possibilities and opportunities that you might want to consider:

• raise awareness on a certain cause and change attitudes
• mobilize your community members and increase their participation
• strengthen the relationships, alliances and partnerships within your community
• enhance your community’s skills or capacities in a certain field
• empower your community by providing a safe space for support, self/collective care, exchange of experiences and strategies on a specific topic
• collectively inform your membership base on the course of your organisation, connect with peers or expand your membership base altogether
• design and conduct strategic planning, or conduct meetings to reach a decision on a certain issue within your organisations
• promote your community’s accomplishments, showcase artwork, or promote a recent collaboration and open a discussion for a feedback from a wider audience
• deepen the knowledge around a particular subject by inviting different groups, keynote speakers
• expand and diversify your community reach and collaborations as distance is not a factorin terms of travel
• enable participation that is based on people’s realities (eg. self-defined pace, anonymity)
• enhance your capacities and skills on both personal and organisational level
• build a resource pool by adjusting the event material that can be used after the event ends
• create different methodologies based on your experience, lessons learned and what worked in your context

It is important to note here that each of the goals you set will have to be adjusted to the format of your event, your capacities and participants’ needs. That requires additional activities and strategies, bearing in mind particular parameters of a specific format of the event. For a detailed approach around your goals and format, go to section “How to choose the best format that suits my online event best?”.

Also, if your event was initially planned to take place in person, you will need to includes some adaptations and reframing around achieving your goal. For example, if you are considering about organizing an art workshop, now online - you would need to think about digitalisation of hardcopy material, adjustment and presentation of the content, techniques and interactive tools for engaging participants, platform options for breakout rooms for different group activities, budget considerations in the sense of providing art materials for your participants,  etc.

Check in Now that you have a general overview of your goals, opportunities and challenges, there are other decisions awaiting you through the next pages. We hope that these two sections have supported you in making your own rationale for your event. Keep an open mind that many elements we are sharing here can be combined, adjusted or reinvented altogether based on your own sense as you go through this guide. We will now be heading in the direction of your participants.