Great Expectations

Meet the experts

In college, Peter Maher was an English major with a passion for music, earning extra cash at restaurants by performing in the front-of-house on weekends and cooking in the back-of-house during the week. His time in the kitchen led to a career as a chef, but after 15 years he wanted more time with his young family. He moved to sales in computer programming services in 1992. Then, in 2001, he returned to music, managing a music school with 650 students. He continued to perform, mostly in churches, and that same year, everything changed. He volunteered to help during a National Association of Pastoral Musicians event and was hooked. The association hired Maher to plan its events.

Like many faith-based planners, Maher came into the industry sideways. After nine years as program coordinator for NAPM, his role has grown and evolved. As director of convention operations, he is an equal decision-making partner where events are concerned, especially for the annual national meeting and trade show, which typically draws 3,000 delegates and 130 exhibitors. While Maher’s full-time planning role officially encompasses a complete range of event management responsibilities, he unofficially wears other hats, like that of tech advisor.

When you ask planners how they landed in the industry, their answers are often circuitous stories like Maher’s. Ask them why they stay in the career, and many will answer: They love their jobs. This is certainly true in the faith-based community, where so many of the planners arrive at their jobs unexpectedly after volunteering with their churches. Some continue to organize events for their churches or organizations part-time, while others assume full-time responsibilities. Still others have started their own planning businesses. Whether they plan meetings in their free time on the weekends or they’ve committed to 40-, 50- or 60-hour weeks, they are seeing their jobs change. Technology, education, certification and expectations are adding to the demands, but it’s hard to find a more devoted group of planners.

A DIFFERENT WORLD
Alisa Wolfe has worked in event management for 18 years. She moved into a faith-based position this past year, and notices a difference between it and other sectors. Wolfe is the event coordinator for the Jewish Family Services of Broward County in Plantation, Fla., but she’s also the public relations and marketing assistant. Forty percent of her day is spent on marketing, PR and fundraising, and the rest on event management.

Because faith-based organizations often depend heavily on donors, sponsors and grants, planners usually are forced to do even more with less, starting off planning an event with meager resources and adding elements as funds arrive. Wolfe says that within faith-based organizations people are more humble. “We’re family,” she says, and the focus is on helping people. “Doing our jobs well doesn’t change our salary in faith-based planning. It means helping more people.” The events are different, too. There are fewer awards and recognition, and more focus on raising funds for causes like domestic abuse or poverty.

Wolfe began her career as a legal assistant but changed her track when she answered an ad for an office manager for a destination management company. She was intrigued by the contracts she saw and began observing the salespeople and their events. Soon she was learning on the job, and transitioned into sales. She developed a specialty in talent and music entertainment, taking on larger clients with up to half a million dollar events.

Wolfe says she didn’t really need any certification to get big-name clients because of the reach of her company, but she says in corporate and third-party event planning, the Certified Meeting Planner designation brings value and respect. Official CMP certification is less common in the faith-based world, but on the rise.

MAKING IT OFFICIAL
This year, more than 900 meeting and event professionals earned the CMP designation, according to the Convention Industry Council, which administers the CMP. “With the economy, there was a lot of competition for the same job,” says Christina Buck, CMP program director at the CIC. “People were searching and also had time on their hands, and saw the value in investing in the CMP, materials and study programs, instead of doing a masters program.” She attributes the steady climb to several factors: a growing demand for CMP qualifications listed in job descriptions and postings; more international countries recognizing the designation; and the variety of planners now seeking the designation, including those in the faith-based community.

Of the 413 registrants for Rejuvenate Marketplace, 27 hold a CMP designation, or about 6 percent.

Peter Maher has his sights set on certification. Each year, he takes the time to work toward his CMP, though he hasn’t completed the process yet. “It’s an affirmation that I can do this job. A [governing] body has set up a set of standards. I know I’ve achieved it, in my heart,” he says, even though he doesn’t have the paperwork to prove it. He has more than enough Continuing Education Units to apply, but like many planners, it’s hard for him to find the time to finish.

Marcus Brewer also sees the value in certification, but time constraints hamper his ability to gather enough experience and CEUs to qualify. His full-time job is as a research engineer with Texas Transportation Institute, but he’s serving as the part-time state office coordinator and main point of contact for the Texas State Association of Free Will Baptists. Planning the association’s annual meeting each June and the smaller board meeting each January takes up 50 percent of his time; the other 50 percent goes to maintaining the state directory, newsletter and website, as well as fielding inquiries from churches looking for new pastors. He enjoys “switching gears,” he says, spending time planning on the weekends and evenings.

Brewer can’t qualify for the CMP certification, which is only open to full-time planners, even though he has been on the job since 2003. He’d like to see an authority body create a certification to recognize his abilities and experience, one for which he and other part-timers could qualify.

But not all part-time planners feel the need to make it official with a CMP designation. For Stacy Robinson, event planning is also outside her primary profession, and she has no plans to pursue certification. She’s the founder of the Robinson Agency, a Christian speakers bureau, and she fields inquiries from faith-based planners. Most people contacting her are laypersons volunteering for the first time at their churches, and they’re open to any planning suggestions Robinson offers. She‘s learned a lot during her 25 years as a volunteer planner. Next February’s national conference for the Christian Women in Media Association in Nashville, Tenn., will benefit from her time and experience as planning committee chair.

CHANGING TIMES
Robinson began planning at a church level in 1985, and she’s seen plenty of changes in the industry. She cites the use of email as making “a significant difference in how we communicate.” It’s eliminated a lot of wasted time and phone calls, and helps with volunteer coordination, she says. Now Skype and group spaces (like Google docs) provide additional options to bring people together more easily, she adds, making planning a little easier.

Dezzie Jackson says technology has “opened doors to learning more of what’s going on in other states and cities.” Jackson founded the Women of Faith Outreach Ministry and plans monthly fellowship meetings for 50. Her housing coordinator duties for the Illinois/Wisconsin Diocese include site selection and hotel negotiation for an annual April meeting that consistently has about 125 attendees. She also does international missionary work.

Jackson, 70, has been volunteering for 20 years as an event coordinator, meeting planner and housing coordinator for various Christian church groups. She first ventured into the industry when she worked part-time at a relative’s Chicago travel agency, overlapping her final few years at Illinois Department of Veteran’s Affairs as a veterans service officer, a job she held for 30 years.

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Her volunteer role began when the church discovered her travel agency work and asked her “to do the same for the Lord.” Jackson makes a major distinction between planning she did for a range groups at the travel agency and what she does for the church. For her, the calling to serve her church makes it easy to volunteer her time to do what she was paid for at the agency. Robinson even spends time on vacations to take in sights and venues where faith-based groups may like to go, then reports back to those she feels will be interested.

The biggest change she’s seen is that cities and CVBs are starting to recognize the importance of faith-based planners. She’s glad to be invited on familiarization trips to destinations she may never have considered for events. “I didn’t know there is a Billy Graham museum right here in Illinois,” she says.

MAKING THE JUMP
D’Wayne Leatherland, CMP, was studying journalism in college when he started working part-time for a church’s denominational headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. “The experience presented so many opportunities to practice and explore the meetings industry, from board meetings to membership or delegate citywides,” he says. “It was a real incubator.” He bypassed his original career interest when event planning took root.

Fifteen years later, Leatherland used his experience to launch his own company, Leatherland Consulting. Since its beginnings in 2008, his independent planning firm has increased its portfolio to 100 percent faith-based planning. Leatherland believes the CMP designation helped him establish credibility and a sense of professionalism. “People realize this is my vocation, not avocation,” he says.

He says faith-based planners often doubt themselves “because so much of what they do is ministry,” but argues that they should feel confident in their profession alongside other planners. Leatherland sees the role of the faith-based planner evolving and focusing on professional development. He’s glad to see a movement toward greater awareness of certification.

Chariolett Johnson has been part of that trend. Her CMP is just months old, and already it’s given her a confidence boost. “I know what I know, even if I refer back to my reference books or colleagues,” she says. Having her CMP gives her a knowledge base and “expands our appreciation for others who help us, such as AV people. It gives us perspective on what they do and what they require, which helps them help us by having the right information, knowledge of terms, and being able to express what our needs are.”

The CMP was a requirement for Johnson’s new full-time planning position at the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists. As assistant to the vice president, Johnson’s title doesn’t say event planner, but 95 percent of what she does is event management, whether advising directors on RFPs or contract processes, handling registration, working on-site as event staff or managing an entire meeting. With 12 to 25 events ranging from eight to 6,000 attendees each year, there’s plenty to keep her fully occupied.

Johnson is a rare breed who says she wanted be a planner her entire life since working on church events and concerts when she was younger. She started as a computer science major but her cooking skills led her to catering, where she quickly changed courses to marketing and management for event planning when she realized event management could be a career. Though not common, some young people are realizing a desire to get into hospitality and planning early in their career. (Read about one of them, Chris Turner, in “A Day in the Life” here.)

After college she’s continued to study, qualifying as a professional bridal consultant, obtaining her Certification in Event Management from George Washington University, and then her CMP. Now she’s working on becoming a Certified Special Events Professional. In the 15 years she’s been planning events, she has seen the role become more widely recognized in faith-based organizations and is pleased to see a greater realization that a capable planner has the skills to research and qualify the ROI of an event, justify it and not just do a little marketing here and there. Certainly her colleagues would agree.