- Venue: The venue will be a large auditorium or conference centre
- Public-liability insurance and delegates insurances.
Unexpected costs are included here as they are likely to appear through the event. Anyway,in this case these costs will be less likely to appear as all costs are usually accounted for.
Hands-off my case, Onnoghen tells CCT Chairman
There are two large parts in the income sections:
- Participants fees: The main source of income for this type of event.
- Sponsors, public institutions and universities: will cover part of the expenses, usually for the plenary speakers and printing. These funds are easy to justify.
- Transport: Do we need any means of transport? Rent a car, chauffeurs, coaches, air transport and special vehicles.
Income and financing
How can we obtain the money? Sources of financing
Once the budget is finished and the scope of the event chosen, the next step is to specify the type of financing needed for the balance of the budget. In any type of event there are always two types of financing; internal and external.
Internal financing: This is basically the funds belonging to the organisation itself, resulting from previous events which were profitable and from the membership fees and private funds from the organiser.
External financing may come from:
Fees: From the participants and attendees in the event. It is calculated in a first draft taking as a reference; a previous edition of the event or a similar one in order to foresee the income and know the fee to charge. Moreover, it is necessary to know the contribution from institutions, however rough the estimative may be, before the final fees are set. Fees tend to cover 50% of the total cost of the event.
Public institution and private sponsor institutional help:
Institutional help:
- Public institutions: Local government and town council
- Official grants: local, national, international.
Disadvantages with this type of grants are that they require complicated forms and endless bureaucracy. Often, these grants are difficult to obtain because all costs need to be fully justified beforehand and partly or wholly returned if they do not cover the costs originally awarded for.
Another important aspect of these grants is that our event should not coincide in time with similar ones, as the sponsorship might be shared with similar events going on at the same time or simply over.
Sometimes, the grants are part of annual budgets established long before the event takes place. It is therefore necessary to apply long in advance and adapt our application to the amount awarded to that purpose.
Private sponsors: Depending on the type and scope of the event it is possible to find private institutions (banks, saving banks, companies, sponsors, etc.) to support the event partly or totally.
Sponsoring means to contribute in kind or cash in consideration for publicity and media coverage that the sponsors will receive in the short term.
When the contribution is in kind, the costs in the examples above will be covered. For example,the town council will pay for the expenses of the venue hired directly or a private sponsor will cover the travelling expenses paying themselves the tickets they accepted to contribute with.
Private sponsors may be:
Associations: legal entities made up by partners with the same purpose who pay a membership fee periodically with which to support this type of events.
Federations: Associations as a whole.
Companies: They finance events in order to become well known in the short term. They usually exchange their economic support for the chance to appear in the events appearing in the media.
Charities: These are non-profit legal entities which may have commercial activities devoting part of their benefits to support cultural, social or environmental activities.
Sponsors: They offer support, either in kind or in cash, in a long term consideration. The sponsors are the promoters and organisers of over 80% of the events arranged. Most events would not be possible without their support.
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