Prom Planning Tips For Committees

Whether your school is large or small, prom is probably considered a major event. Although the majority of proms are held in the spring, prom committees usually begin their planning close to the beginning of the school year. This event takes lots of planning and plenty of cooperation by a variety of people, including faculty, administration, parents, and students. Before a school even begins to plan for a prom, committees should be established to cover several areas. To be able to perform as efficiently as possible, prom committees should be well-balanced.

Typically, there may be several faculty members who are over the prom, and these may include the junior and senior class sponsors. Hopefully, these teachers have many of the juniors and/or seniors in their classes, so that they are well-acquainted with the hardest working, best behaved, and most organized students already. These students can then be counted on to work hard in their participation of prom planning. The teachers who head the prom planning organization should be the ones to place others on committee teams. Depending on the size of the staff and the willingness of the volunteers, each committee could be headed by at least two staff members.

There are usually several parent volunteers who would be glad to donate their time and skills, so encourage their participation! Committee heads will want to divide these parent volunteers out among the subcommittees. In doing this, there should be enough adult supervision to cover the many nights and weekends that go into prom planning. If there are several adults for each committee, they can alternate working nights and weekends, especially as the big night draws near.

Various categories should be established for the committees. These might include fundraising, decorating, gift donations, prom breakfast, ticket sales, entertainment, refreshments, etc. Once the committee categories have been designated and heads of committees have been established, students can then sign up for the category of their choice. Of course, if you have many students to sign up for the decorating committee, but few volunteer for the fundraising committee, you may have to assign students to each committee. Be sure to place several students in each committee who are responsible, hardworking, and enthusiastic.

Once you've established your committees, it should be up to each committee head to call the meetings for their particular group. Each group, however, should continue to give the faculty in charge of the prom updates on their progress. Any problems should also be discussed. Prom committee heads might want to schedule meetings for only the adults, occasionally. As prom night becomes closer to a reality, committees who have completed their tasks may need to assist other committees. For example, the decorating committee will need to do a lot of last minute work to ready the prom site, and a lot of this work will be done in the last few hours before the prom takes place. They will probably need quite a bit of extra assistance from others. Finally, every committee should be responsible for tying up any loose ends at the completion of the prom. This may include items such as clean-up, paying the band or disc jokey, storing decorations, and handling any leftover money by depositing it into a school-approved account.

When committees are chosen and managed efficiently, proms have a greater chance of being successful, ensuring a good time for everyone involve.