I run a bunch of blues dancing events. My most important one is Open Blues. It’s sold out every year and people love it. There are some who have come back every single year (it’s been 6 years). Anyway, I am going to write up some thoughts and share them. Maybe they’ll be helpful.
Money
I never thought about making money with events. There are only 2-3 couples in Europe who made a fully-fletched career out of blues dancing and they make most of their money by teaching, not organising. It’s very hard to be both profitable and have a highly engaged community. If you make lots of money personally, people will be less likely to volunteer, and will have much higher expectations. Over all the years, I’ve only made money from teaching. If I really want to make some money, I make an event with workshops where I teach with someone. These can easily be profitable (but are probably still not worth your time, if you think about your hourly wage).
Pricing
I want to cover event costs and significantly reduce the chances of losing personal money. Not being for-profit makes your pricing much easier. Simply take the cost and add some buffer. The easiest methodology for a small event is to calculate the cost per participant and then slap 20% on the sum. You need this buffer because unexpected things happen. It’s better to safe some for next year than to be in the red. Putting in your own money unexpectedly can make you feel absolutely terrible. 20% might sound like much, but I’ve consistently underestimated costs by about 10%, despite years of running the same event at the same venue.
Fixed vs Variable Costs
I further reduced the risk of losing money but aggressively reducing fixed costs. Fixed costs are the same no matter how many people come to your festival (common examples: bands, venue, photographer). Variable costs are heavily dependent on the number of participants (common examples: food). You want to have maximum variable costs, and minimum fixed costs. This way even a very small number of participants will still make the event possible and profitable.
You can negotiate key agreements to switch from fixed to variable costs. You can usually set a minimum with a venue. Most bars will let you have a minimum bar spend for instance. Be careful to be realistic. Dancers do not drink much. A venue with rooms might be OK with booking individual beds if it’s a large proportion of their available beds. Even bands might be inclined to do a proportional thing, especially less famous bands.
Our largest costs are always venue, food, and then bands. Food is usually priced by unit or person, so it’s variable anyway. We have a per head agreement with our kitchen leads. I’ve had bands who agreed on variable costs (not at Open Blues, because we were always sold out). For other events, I had tiered agreements, e.g. if we have fewer than 30 people, you get $200, if we have more, you get $400. This also aligns incentives and encourages bands to advertise the event to their circles.
Fail Criteria
I have a mental cut-off point where I say I won’t do the event. If we don’t reach 30 confirmed participants, I would not run it. At that point I feel it would be too small to be fun or worth my effort. I think about the event size when looking at this minimum, and then derive the minimum fixed costs from that.