Objectives, Scope and Budget

Start with the objective

Events consume a great deal of money and time, and a substantial proportion achieve nothing measurable because nobody defined what success would look like. Before anything else, establish:

• Why — what the event must achieve: a decision reached, knowledge transferred, relationships built, a product launched, a team aligned, a requirement discharged.
• Who — precisely which audience, and how many.
• What success looks like — stated so it can be assessed afterwards.
• Whether an event is the right vehicle at all — several objectives are better served by a document, a series of smaller meetings or an online session.

Write the objective down and test every subsequent decision against it. This is what prevents the event from being shaped by the venue, the budget or the preferences of whoever speaks loudest.

Scoping

• Format — conference, workshop, training, seminar, exhibition, dinner, or a combination. In-person, online or hybrid.
• Duration and date — check against the audience’s calendar, school and public holidays, religious observances, industry events and your own organisation’s key dates.
• Location — where the audience is, and how they will travel.
• Scale — a realistic attendance figure. Over-estimating drives every cost upward and produces an empty room; under-estimating produces a venue that cannot accommodate people.
• Governance — who owns the event, who decides, and what needs approval.

Building the budget

Cost categories to include, with the ones most often forgotten marked:

• Venue hire, and any minimum spend commitment.
• Catering — per head, plus service charges and taxes which can add substantially.
• Accommodation, where provided.
• Audio-visual and technical support, which is routinely under-budgeted and is where venues make much of their margin.
• Speaker fees, travel and accommodation.
• Printing, signage, badges and materials.
• Staffing — including your own organisation’s time, which is a real cost.
• Online platform and streaming costs for hybrid.
• Insurance.
• Photography, recording and production.
• Transport and transfers.
• Contingency — at least ten per cent, and more for a first-time or complex event.

Controlling the budget

• Get quotations in writing with everything itemised, and confirm what is excluded.
• Watch per-head costs, which scale directly with attendance; a small increase per head becomes substantial at volume.
• Track committed spend, not just invoiced, from the first booking.
• Record every cancellation deadline in a diary, because they are where money is lost.
• Reconcile the final invoices against the agreement carefully. Event invoices frequently contain charges that were not agreed, and they are much easier to challenge before payment.