An Event Strategist’s No-BS Guide to Event Budgeting

Aug 28

Start with a Question:

My intake form has ~5 questions on it. Which do you think is skipped, guessed or fibbed the most? You guessed it: BUDGET. Why so draped in mystery? Usually, it’s because there is uncertainty around how much to budget, or where to start when creating an event budget. When InEvent asked me to be a part of their Open House series, I was thrilled to share my favorite tips, tricks and tools (ahem, Airtable!) with their audience.

Reality Check

Just like individuals, organizations can feel the effects of global instability within their budgets. Everything from expecting lower attendance, to a lower availability and higher cost of some of the items we consume most.

First thing’s first: You need a strategy, and that strategy needs a round, confident number attached to it.

Fixed or Variable?

It’s important to know the difference between fixed and variable costs in events.

Fixed costs, like a room rental fee, typically don’t change as long as there are no additional rooms added.

In my experience, the variable costs are what sneak up on inexperienced planning teams–especially in budget-strapped organizations. We see the number of attendees increasing and think: Awesome, more eyes on my content, more people to network with, and more ticket revenue!

What they may forget is that variable costs like catering (per person), printing (per item/batch), transportation (per vehicle) also increase with each body you bring into the space.

One note: I’ve seen some catering teams offering a fixed cost for “up to” x amount of people, and I think that can be a great way to make sure that your catering numbers don’t automatically increase with every new guest.

Lay It All Out

As event planners, everything is important. We can see the possibilities of what could be done. But possible and feasible are two totally different things.

The first exercise I like to do with my Clients is put things into general categories:

Event Planning & Management Fees
Venue
Catering
Bar/Beverage
Audio Visual/Production
Decor/Rentals
Staffing
Speaking Fees
Experiential
Marketing
Public Relations
Advertising/Media Buying
Entertainment
Event Tech
Registration/Ticketing
Graphic Design
Printing

Badges/Wayfinding/Signage

Photography
Videography
Gifting
Promotional Products
Transportation
Travel Fees
Hotel/Lodging Fees paid by the org*

*OR, minimum guarantees on room block revenue

Shipping/Storage
Security
Porters/Cleaning
Permits
Gratuities
Delivery Fees
Emergency Medical Services
Event Insurance
Miscellaneous/Contingency

My Client’s eyes usually start to widen during this exercise, because it looks like a lot. And, I won’t lie to you…it is! But, this allows us all to see the full scope of what’s possible, both in what we can bring in to make the event look and feel amazing, and also how many resources may be needed to achieve those goals–if we need to invest in each category.

Now that we’re on the same page about the reality of the situation, let’s talk specifics.

Be Strategic

Which of these elements can you cross off right away, knowing that they won’t be relevant?

For example, if you are hosting an event where the guests are from the same city or town, you may not need a hotel room block. If the event is only in one location, you may not need transportation. Which of the elements can you cross off pretty easily? Do those first.

Then, pick the three elements of your event that will have the most impact. Is it the fundraising speech where you show, in real time, how much money you’ve raised? Then your AV/Production should be on point. If you want to make sure your guests are absolutely wowed by their meals, you want to make sure to invest in your caterer. If you know you’ll want them to dance the night away, music and entertainment should be your focus.

Now that you have your top three most impactful aspects of the event, you’ll want to determine how much those actually cost.

Create Your Budget

Here’s where it starts to get technical: you need to create a budget; ideally in a spreadsheet format, where you can share and get input in real time (ie a Live Document or software).My favorite way to do this is Airtable (referral link attached), but you can use Google Sheets, Excel, or any other spreadsheet or software that works for you!

Start with a blank table OR import your budget
- Airtable gives you a very robust template to work with, called “Event Planning & Budgeting.”
  - Four tables:
  - What I love about Airtable is that it gives you the opportunity to create ways for your data to ‘talk’ to one another, even across tables and views. I also like that you can create and share individual views to give information to those that require it, without giving them too much information to where it becomes overwhelming.
First Table: Events

List the name of your events and all other details, including:

Type
Date
Graphics
Primary Audience
Checkbox for Internal Events
Budget

Second Table: Budget

This is what I mean when I say that Airtable data talks to each other. You’ll notice the first column is a formula combining the name of the Event and the Budget Category.
You also have a budget and a “Rollup”; this takes the data from the Tasks & Expenses Table and ensures that each event’s actual budget spent to date is reflected, so you’ll be able to see the proposed budget vs actuals and it will update in real time
Example: Add ‘Secure Caterer’ to the top record and you’ll see the data in ‘Actual’ or Rollup category changes in real time
Note the different views and filters/grouping/sorting available to make the data work for you.

Third Table: Tasks & Expenses

I love this table because it shows you what AT can do with the same data!
Here we have grid views that show you tasks per event, and also Kanban (Trello) in Taylor’s tasks, AND cards that just display receipts.
This is excellent because it allows you to zero in on aspects of the budget, see all of your events laid out, and share the most pertinent information with your team.

Fourth Table: Vendors

This is where you'll put the vendors that make up each budget category, and their information at a glance. I also like to add a column for w9 for each vendor, for ease of transfer to the Finance department

Make sure that you include fixed and variable costs, updating the units with every RSVP as it makes sense.
Not every event or project is built the same, so some projects have these levels of detail while others function more as a spreadsheet. Don’t worry about fancy views when you’re first starting out, just make sure you have the information you need to make budget decisions at a glance.

Off-Setting Your Budget

Since I work with many traditional nonprofits and impact-driven organizations, we are often speaking about sponsorship opportunities.There are many ways to create a sponsorship deck or start to strategize who can best support you, but I’ll offer 3 tips for creating a sponsorship deck that gets your prospects interested:

Gather data about your event and your org as a whole, including quantitative data about the number of attendees, organizational members, and subscribers/followers
Determine how many sponsorship levels you want to offer, and the minimum investment you will accept (on paper) as a sponsorship support
Have a conversation with existing partners that are in the same industry as your target audience for sponsorship, and see what their pain points are. You can build solutions directly into your sponsorship deck.

Overall, this is where it can get tricky because you want to make sure you are delivering actual value to your stakeholders, beyond a logo on a sign or in an email. You’ll want to form multi-year or multi-event partnerships where possible, to give the bond a chance to grow organically.

In-Kind Opportunities

I want to note that In-Kind opportunities are never a given, especially given our topic: Budget. It’s never safe to assume you will receive any in-kind opportunities, nor to base your budget on them. Acknowledging this fact, here are my top tips for exploring in-kind sponsorships:

Determine the types of organizations and companies that would truly benefit from being in front of your audience, and who have something that would benefit your event.
Establish goals, objectives and boundaries for your partnership. What does success look like for you? What about the partner org?
Identify opportunities within your space and schedule to incorporate partners, thoughtfully.

The end goal is to create a bond that is actually mutually beneficial and not one-sided. You have to be truly honest with yourself and with your partner about your audience, your limitations, and your abilities to deliver on the elements outlined in the sponsorship agreement.

This goes double for an inaugural event—your initial stakeholders are much more than sponsors, they are partners and founding supporters and should be treated as such.

Conclusion

Your budget should be a working document and take into account where all potential money & resources come from (ie, different internal departments working together, sponsors, in-kind means).

You should always leave a contingency because there are things that come up last-minute in almost every planning scenario, and you don’t want to be on the hook if you don’t have to be.

Watch the Recap for More Budgeting Tips!

The fabulous team at InEvent have released the recap video, which you can register for and watch OnDemand here.

Beth Lawrence