Mark my homework for me, Part 1: Budget

[kitlane]

Note also that a Registered Charity cannot trade. Though it can have a separate trading company who's profit is 100% returned to the charity.

 

Are you sure about that? The theatre I used to work for was a Registered Charity and a Limited company. Whilst it did have a subsidiary trading company which looked after catering, the vast majority of income and expenditure went through the main charity. This raises all sorts of interesting questions regarding cultural exemption for VAT. The thing a charity can't do is make a profit which it returns as a dividend to shareholders.

[JimWebber]

(Snipped)

 

I think the best piece of advice I could give you would be: if you cut corners, you'll get burned.

 

ie, if the tech spec doesn't meet the artists riders, you could have breached the contract and the might walk. If your insurance isn't right and something goes wrong, you could end up sharing a room with a large man who wants to be very friendly. and if things like toilets, food, access, parking and lineup aren't right, your punters can very quickly turn into an angry mob. EVERYTHING is important - just to different people.

 

(Snipped)

 

I cannot agree more with anything said here.

 

However, I feel it should be pointed out that PLI will not stop you sharing that small room with that very friendly man if you have done something wrong, and that the courts decide that you deserve to share said room with said man.

 

However what it will do is if the court decide that you have to pay lots of money then the insurers will stump up the cash. If you are really lucky they may send you a postcard as you do go off to meet your new friend.

 

There seems to be a bit of a misconception now and then on the BR that PLI will stop you from having to answer questions from a man or woman wearing a funny wig.

 

Although I am not an events promoter of any kind, I think that those posters are right who advocate working out how much it will all cost, and then working out how (or indeed if) you can meet those costs. Whatever you have left at the end of the day in your pocket is your profit / beer money...

 

Jim

[charl.ie]

It would be a lot more cost effective (assuming you only want to sell 1000 tickets) to hire a local venue which already has sound, lighting, technicians, stage, toilets, bars, etc, box office facilities all included.

A ready made venue fully licensed up with everything working and no heart-stopping crisis like gensets going down and the site being flooded.

While I appreciate that it would be more cost effective to hire a venue, and although that is what I would (now!) go and say to a charity that had asked me to plan this in real life, it wouldn't be the challenge I was after.

Granted you probably want to do it in a field for a reason, but it does mean the event stands a much better chance of being profitable.

Indeed, I'm trying to do this to build my knowledge of organising events in green and brown field sites.

 

Thank you all for your valuable comments so far, it's given me even more to think about.

[Chris Adam]

(Snipped)

 

. If your insurance isn't right and something goes wrong, you could end up sharing a room with a large man who wants to be very friendly. (Snipped)

 

However, I feel it should be pointed out that PLI will not stop you sharing that small room with that very friendly man if you have done something wrong, and that the courts decide that you deserve to share said room with said man.

 

 

 

Agreed. I was meaning more along the lines, if you don't have insurance at all and an ACCIDENT occurs, the judge will bang you up even if there was no negligence or otherwise, because that almost proves negligence in planning in itself. PLI is a whole different ball game and certainly doesnt mean that you can be negligent and get away with it. It's there to cover the finacial aspects ACCIDENTS or third party criminal acts.

I would hope that all professionals know that, but as this is the next generation forum, you are quite right to clarify further.

[Doug Siddons]

My comment about bands not getting paid is a personal bug bear of mine, but it was put in to raise a point. The event relies upon getting the required quantity of paying public to attend. In my experience getting 1000 people to a new charity event without a significant draw is very difficult. Therefor I would suggest that a portion of the budget be given over to an act/personality which could be reasonably expected to attract the large proportion of paying public, or has a superstar offered thier services for free in this scenario?

[dwents]

A local festival to us Beachdown in Brighton was cancelled over the bank holiday weekend due to poor ticket sales etc

Maybe some margin to google it look at the artiste list it was good yet it made no money ?

 

One other piece of advice a old but wise man gave me !

was when people offer there services to you on the cheap you have to take into account what it would really cost if you had to pay full price ?

ie your farmer pulling the plug could you get a replacement venue etc etc and at what cost

[richard]

It is also worth noting that a lot of the big charity events that happen are not actually there to make a profit for the charity - they are instead there to raise awareness, which in turn they hope will raise them money. They also make sure that any donations made on the day go to the charity, not the event. Therefore a charity event would often not be expected to make a profit from the sales.

[ImagineerTom]

Whilst you may be looking at this as a challenge or a learning experiance I'd suggest there's no point in wasting your time learning how to do something that you'll never use in any format in the real world and which is doomed to fail from the outset. What you're proposing to do here is a completely false situation that wouldn't teach you the lessons you need to learn for any real situation as the scale of services and contractors you would use for 1000 people is very different to that which you'd use in a real major event. 1000 people events would be serviced by the local tech crew, the local toilet hire people, the local marquee company, the local security firm, the local printers. Proper festivals (like guilfest, latitude, glastonbury, wireless etc) are serviced by huge corporations who have pan-european operations and operate in a totally different way and on a very different scale to your local providers would; learning how a one-man-band local provider does business would probably hinder you in dealing with the big boys as you'd have a (false) expectation that would have to be overcome before you've started.

 

If you want to learn how to put on 1000 punter events then the market for them is always going to be based around existing venues/infrastructure and making minor tweeks to those facilities to suit your needs so run some events in your local venues and learn that market,

 

If you want to learn how to put on outdoor music festivals then either get involved with an existing festival (every major and minor music festival have intern roles) and learn there and then how they work or if you really want to do it yourself then organise your own big music festival and call in all the established players. Learn the actual skills and techniques that are really used.

[David Lee]

Out of interest, have you factored into Policing the event - the local Police Force in Cambridge wanted quite a lot of money from the organisers of the Strawberry Fair recently, plus a donation to the St Johns Ambulance for their attendance (or the cost of private first aid coverage). These could well eat into your costs quite dramatically.

 

There seems to be a bit of a misconception now and then on the BR that PLI will stop you from having to answer questions from a man or woman wearing a funny wig.

 

Well said - it will not protect you from neglect, incompetence etc. They may pay up, but then may also chase you for the money or they may simply walk away.

[gnomatron]

I think this was a pretty good little exercise, the OP now has loads more knowledge of how these sorts of events work than he had before, so it was certainly worthwhile. And at least for a change this cloud-cuckoo unrealistic event isn't actually something anyone is trying to make happen B-)

[Dave]

Note also that a Registered Charity cannot trade. Though it can have a separate trading company who's profit is 100% returned to the charity.

 

Are you sure about that? The theatre I used to work for was a Registered Charity and a Limited company. Whilst it did have a subsidiary trading company which looked after catering, the vast majority of income and expenditure went through the main charity. This raises all sorts of interesting questions regarding cultural exemption for VAT. The thing a charity can't do is make a profit which it returns as a dividend to shareholders.

Just spotted this - FWIW charity law distinguishes between primary purpose trading and fundraising trading. A charity can trade to fulfill its objectives (eg an educational charity can charge money for courses) and there are no legal issues with that, but selling trinkets to raise money has to be done via a subsidiary.