[MR] Why do events cost as much as they do?

[Nikulai Ivanovich]

Greetings Atlantia.

I saw the thread on the Merry Rose and skimmed over it, and decided to post
a long time autocrats perspective on this issue.  Let’s start with the
understanding that the autocrat and group financial committee placed
considerable thought on the event budget and did the best they could to
balance a number of competing concerns to come up with the best pricing they
could.

This will be a short Autocrat 101 lesson and so I apologize for the length.
That said, if you want to understand event financing and some of the
struggles an autocrat goes through with his budget, please read on.

So, you have an idea for an event – just the basics of a theme, fighting
style, feast thoughts, etc. Great. The first thing you need is a place to
hold it. So, you put together a list of site requirements including (and
this is a very small sampling):

·         How many people am I expecting / need room for?

·         How many cars do I expect to need to park?

·         Do I need / want cabins? For how many people?

·         Do I want a wet site?

The next step is to find a site that meets your requirements. You go through
the known sites, and if you are industrious you go searching out other
potential sites. (My personal record is investigating nine sites – most of
them never before used by the SCA - for a particular event.)

You have your site and know what it costs. Great. What else does the site
require to make it workable? Portajohns? A dumpster rental? Water brought in
from off site? Lets look at portajohns. For sanitary reasons, there is a
formula for calculating the number of people in attendance over a period of
time to tell you how many portajohns you need. (Don’t ask me what it is – I
let the rental company experts give me their estimate when I call around for
bids.) And as this is the SCA you need a number of handicapped stalls over
and above the general recommended proportion as you have to accommodate for
garb.  Repeat with everything else you need. And remember if reservations
exceed expectations you may need to order more to meet basic health and
sanitary requirements.

Also, campers cost more. Day trippers come, use the site and leave. Campers
add to the overall expense of the portajohns, etc. As they use the site for
more hours. Cabins usually cost additional, and that cost is sometimes not
covered solely by the cabin fee but supplemented by the day trip fee. Some
sites charge an additional fee for anyone staying overnight.

Add all of that up and you have your base-line site cost. Then you need to
figure out everything else you need and/or want. Site tokens? Prizes? Tape
to hang decorations in the hall? Etc etc etc – it gets to be a long list
fairly quickly.

So you have a budget for what this will cost to pull off and you have the
rough attendance figure that you have been using. Dive and you get the cost
per person of the event. (Keeping this very simple.) You then take that to
the financial committee.

The financial committee has several other things on their mind, such as:

·         How much money do we have in the bank?

·         How much money can we afford to spend knowing all of our other
expenses?

·         How much money can we afford to loose if this event tanks?

·         How much money do we need to make in order to pay the groups
expenses such as post office box, postage, storage rental, bank fees, etc.?

They will look at the number you have, and determine if the break even
attendance you have is reasonable and if your budget will meet the groups
other requirements. When they are done tweaking the numbers, you have your
final figures and can go to press with your fliers.

All of this budgeting is usually done with adult costs. Once you have those,
you look at what you can discount for kids and generally divide that in
half. For example, feast food costs the same whether a child is taking the
seat or an adult is. Cabin space is usually the same.

In a nutshell, event pricing is not as easy as ‘just make it a five dollar
event fee any more is too expensive, especially for families’ – there is a
lot that goes into it.


-- 
Master Nikulai Ivanovich, OP
Or, on a bend cotised sable three fox masks palewise or
http://www.atlow.org