Multi-Site: Guest Services and Launching a New Campus (part three)
We’re wrapping up a three-part series on our central Guest Services team’s role in launching new campuses. Get started here.
In the first post in this series, I told you the three primary areas we speak into and/or lead for permanent facilities: site plans, blueprints, and the preparation of the facility itself.
Post deux took us down the rabbit hole of portable facilities: potential site walkthroughs, road cases and trailers, and incubator services.
And as we land the plane on this launch series, there’s a whole smattering of items that our central Guest Services team handles for both permanent and portable.
Here is how our central Guest Services Team assists, whether we’re talking brick and mortar or pull-behind trailers-on-wheels:
Supply assessment, ordering, and assembling
Any new campus requires lots of new supplies, from drill-in anchors for first-time guest tents to coffee filters for Volunteer Headquarters. Our team maintains a master purchase list of all potential items that a campus might need. When prepping a campus launch, we’ll do a full assessment of any areas we manage (see “Facility prep” on this post) and add / delete / modify where appropriate.
We then undertake the ominous task of ordering, assembling, labeling, charging, and installing the stuff. It’s like the parental toy assembly on Christmas Eve, except Christmas Eve lasts for over a month and you trip over stuff trying to get to your desk. And by the way: even though items are ordered anywhere from a month to 18 months in advance of launch, we have to make sure that items for portable facilities will eventually fit in a certain bin in a certain road case on a certain trailer, and items for permanent facilities will eventually fit on a certain shelf in a certain storage room.
Staff hiring
If a campus is brand-new, they’re going to need a Guest Services Director. In the past, we’ve both worked with the campus pastor to find an ideal candidate, and – in at least one case – made the hiring decision when the campus pastor had not yet been selected. But in most situations, we’re going to follow this plan to make sure that the right person gets the right seat on the bus.
Building / supply review
In part one of this series, I mentioned that our central team gets the keys from the contractor on a permanent building, and we prep the site for the campus team before handing it over to them. In portable, it works similarly with road cases and supplies.
But at some point a few weeks before launch, we’ll meet with the Guest Services Director and / or other appropriate staff, and do a full walk-through of everything: where things are located, how they’re re-ordered, expectations for clealiness and organization, you name it.
Depending on the timeline of the campus and the longevity of the Director, there are certainly situations where we’ll work closesly with them throughout the ordering and assessment process: what do you need? What can transfer from somewhere else? But in a lot of recent situations, we’re prepping a facility for a staff member that doesn’t yet exist.
Initial volunteer training
One of our goals in launching a new campus is that the central team handles a lot of the “non-breathing” items, leaving the campus team free to prepare their people, pastor well through transitions, etc. But where we tend to come in on the people side is when we’re nearing launch. We’ll work with the Guest Services Director to make sure their volunteers and volunteer leaders are trained and ready for day one. That will involve everything from our standard volunteer onboarding to helping the team know how to work the new equipment for their campus.
Core team training
One of my favorite parts of launch is seeing the campus core team come together. Whether that’s via an incubator service in the weeks before launch or a pre-launch celebration for a long-awaited permanent facility, those are moments when you see the fruit of people’s labors and prayers come to harvest.
During those pre-launch festivities, I’ll often work with the campus staff to make sure that we’re launching with the outsider in mind. At the vision night, we’ll talk about the blessings of a new facility, but we’ll also give strong reminders that this facility is not just for us. It’s for our community. It’s for those not yet here. It’s for those currently far from Jesus. Those are good mind-shifts before everyone starts laying claim to their favorite auditorium seat and installing a brass plaque on their favorte parking space.
On-site presence
Finally, one or more of our central Guest Services Team will be on-site at the new facility for the first 4-8 weeks after launch. We want to make sure that the Guest Services Director is in a good place to lead. Our presence is simply to assist with practical needs, to troubleshoot problem areas, and to assess as we go and help make needed changes. However, we try to do that behind-the-scenes as much as possible. The director is the director, and we want to affirm their leadership, not overshadow it.
I said at the start of this series that our central Guest Services Team plays an outsized role in helping a campus get established. Portable or permanent, trailers or concrete foundations, you’ve gotten the full tour of how we strive to be helpful. Whether you’re in a multi-site context or just seeking to get a new ministry off the ground, I hope this series has inspired some ideas for efficiency and practical helps for your own areas of service.
Related posts in this series:
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