Deciding how many grills you’ll need, and who will lend them.
Shopping for meat, buns, condiments, soft drinks, and ice (side dishes, plates, cups, and cutlery will be provided by each family attending the party, pot-luck style).
Designating people to man the barbecue grills.
Overseeing who is going to lend tables, chairs, and coolers.
The public relations leader should be responsible for:
Distributing and collecting invitations and RSVPs, and compiling a list of who is donating what.
Collecting monetary donations, if you’ll be asking for them.
Scheduling entertainment, such as the fire truck (more about this later).
Providing stick-on name tags (and markers or pens) for the event, and making sure that each attendee receives one when they get to the party (first and last names, so people can tell who belongs to what family).
Contacting local businesses for donations, if desired; sometimes, in order to attract new customers, local business vendors will gladly supply door prizes, coupons, or free passes.
The children’s entertainment leader should be responsible for:
Planning and organizing children’s games: which games will be played? Can the supplies for each game be donated, or do they have to be bought? Are there enough games to entertain each age range?
Designating people to oversee each game.
Providing small prizes for the winners.
The setup and takedown leader should be responsible for:
Orchestrating both setup and cleanup of the party, and designating people to help.
Providing trash receptacles.
Ensuring that recyclables are separated from regular trash and deposited at the correct facility.
Plan to have at least two meetings with your planning committee prior to the party, the first to dole out responsibilities, and the second to make sure everyone is following through as planned. Make each meeting as short as possible, and informal. It’s important to keep a list of each person’s assigned tasks in case any dispute arises, or someone promises to do something and then forgets (it happens!). Put together a master to-do list, with each person’s responsibilities clearly outlined (maybe in the form of a helpful checklist) and all the party information, make copies, and hand it out to each person involved in the planning; that way, they’ll always be clear on what they need to do.