One major skill taught in activity director courses is how to identify and relate to your target market. Activities, events and meetings all need to be tailored to the people who are going to participate in them. A group of children under the age of 10 are probably not going to be interested in a two-hour PowerPoint presentation, and a group of senior citizens in their mid-80s is probably not going to want to play a game of tag. Activity director courses teach you how to identify whom you are planning activities for and how to choose activities that will relate to them.
In a perfect world, activities would have unlimited budgets. Unfortunately, they seldom (if ever) do. So, you need to learn how to budget effectively, assigning certain amounts of money to certain elements.
Activity director courses also teach you how to express your budget. Most employers will not accept a flat figure for how much an activity cost. Rather, they need to know how you spent the money, and on what. Activity director courses will teach you how to show this on a clear budget.
Activity direction also takes some leadership skills. You need to be able to hold the activity-goers' attention and explain to them what the activity is, what its purpose is, and how to carry out the activity. This requires leadership behavior, which includes humility, honesty, confidence and empathy. Activity director courses will teach you how to express these behaviors in more effective ways, thus making you a better leader.
Activity directors are not very helpful if nobody comes to their activities. So, the final important component of activity director training is communications. Potential activity directors are taught how to get their message out there by identifying where their target market will see information and delivering that information in an effective way. This involves analysis, writing and generally marketing meetings in a positive, enjoyable manner.
The Wellington, New Zealand, City Council offers an activity director program that teaches the skills directors should have. It opens with case studies on other successfully planned activities and events, highlighting what the planners did correctly and what pitfalls they successfully (and unsuccessfully) avoided. It goes on to encourage group discussion and brainstorming, gives vital budget information (such as how to file taxes) and how to address precisely what need the event will fill. This is done through traditional instruction, discussion groups and hands-on, applied learning that comes from having students plan their own events under supervision.