Case Study: Amy Cato

The LifeWay’s Girls Ministry Forum faced low registration numbers.

Planner: Amy Cato, Event Coordinator, LifeWay

Event: More than 200 women and girls attended LifeWay’s Girls Ministry Forum held at the Church Leadership Training Center in Nashville, Tenn., Feb. 26-28, 2010.

Challenge: Two months prior to the Girls Ministry Forum, Cato discovered registration for her event was far from projections. “We planned for 115 attendees but we only had 30 people registered for the forum,” says Cato, who works with a planning team of 13 and does the scheduling for LifeWay’s 26 annual events. “With the recession, a lot of churches are hanging on to money as long as possible causing youth leaders to have to wait for approval before registering on church budget dollars.” While the attendance for LifeWay events remained steady in 2009, Cato noticed registrations coming in much later for each event. “At all of our events, we have will calls and onsite registration that was heavily hit in 2009 with a lot of people making last-minute decisions to come.”

With nine months of planning invested in the long-anticipated forum, cancellation was not an option. “There was never any thought of canceling,” says Cato. “We’ve been working on girls ministry for so long and this is a huge vision for us. It was going to go off with 30, 50 or 150 attendees. We were going to lose financially, but at LifeWay many smaller events are supported by the larger arena events that we do. I don’t know how much money we would have lost on the event but we weren’t concerned about it.”

Solution: “We got a girls ministry blog out there and our LifeWay marketing team kicked it up a notch. In one month, registration jumped and we reached our goal of 115 attendees. I think people jumped on to that blog and started to see the promotion for the event. Our girls ministry blog is one of the top 10 at LifeWay.”

Advice: “If you believe in what you’re doing, you just keep on pushing forward toward it,” says Cato. “Look at your marketing and pray for ideas that don’t cost a dime.”

Affiliation: LifeWay’s Women’s Enrichment Ministry offers leadership training, spiritual growth tools and enrichment events to encourage women to get into the Word of God. LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention is headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., where it employs nearly 1,500 full-time and part-time employees.

Planner: Amy Cato,

Event Coordinator, LifeWay

Event: More than 200 women and girls attended LifeWay’s Girls Ministry Forum held at the Church Leadership Training Center in Nashville, Tenn., Feb. 26-28, 2010.

Challenge: Two months prior to the Girls Ministry Forum, Cato discovered registration for her event was far from projections. “We planned for 115 attendees but we only had 30 people registered for the forum,” says Cato, who works with a planning team of 13 and does the scheduling for LifeWay’s 26 annual events. “With the recession, a lot of churches are hanging on to money as long as possible causing youth leaders to have to wait for approval before registering on church budget dollars.” While the attendance for LifeWay events remained steady in 2009, Cato noticed registrations coming in much later for each event. “At all of our events, we have will calls and onsite registration that was heavily hit in 2009 with a lot of people making last-minute decisions to come.”

With nine months of planning invested in the long-anticipated forum, cancellation was not an option. “There was never any thought of canceling,” says Cato. “We’ve been working on girls ministry for so long and this is a huge vision for us. It was going to go off with 30, 50 or 150 attendees. We were going to lose financially, but at LifeWay many smaller events are supported by the larger arena events that we do. I don’t know how much money we would have lost on the event but we weren’t concerned about it.”

Solution: “We got a girls ministry blog out there and our LifeWay marketing team kicked it up a notch. In one month, registration jumped and we reached our goal of 115 attendees. I think people jumped on to that blog and started to see the promotion for the event. Our girls ministry blog is one of the top 10 at LifeWay.”

Advice: “If you believe in what you’re doing, you just keep on pushing forward toward it,” says Cato. “Look at your marketing and pray for ideas that don’t cost a dime.”

Affiliation: LifeWay’s Women’s Enrichment Ministry offers leadership training, spiritual growth tools and enrichment events to encourage women to get into the Word of God. LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention is headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., where it employs nearly 1,500 full-time and part-time employees