Event Organization Plan - Math Problem Example

Name: Professor: Course: Date: Event Organization Plan Introduction Owing to the rising need to provide support to charitable organizations as well as people affected by disasters, event organizations have become a common means of raising funds for such purpose. Sport events have emerged quite important in terms of their impacts and benefits with economic benefits receiving the most attention. The main reason for preference in sport event revolves around economic benefits due to the ease in quantification. However, benefit-concerts have also shown great potential in raising funds especially for non-governmental organizations, charitable organizations, as well as individual needs. Benefit-concerts usually involve gala or performances featuring musicians, celebrities, comedians, and other performances that may attract large crowds of people to assist in a humanitarian crisis (Genocide Intervention n.d). Benefit-concerts in most cases feature popular performers through voluntary or waving of performance fee in order to help raise funds for a given course or create awareness on certain social concerns in the society issues. Benefit- concerts may also provide an avenue for online participation in the event through online contributions. Such an event usually takes place on more often due to its aspects of convenience to attendants and cost effectiveness. Benefit-concerts mainly take place in some auditoriums that are in most cases free of charge though the choice of venue highly depends on the number of audience anticipated for turn up. The venue and kind of performance or performers also depends on the target group of audience such as youths, elderly people, or diversity of people. For such events to meet their intended purposes, they must meet the needs of the target audience. Benefit-concerts require proper strategies to obtain reliable performers and volunteers in order to limit the cost of organizing such events for maximum economic benefit. Benefit-concerts channeled towards charitable organization often stand a great chance of getting sponsorship from companies, governments, as well as prominent people and political figures. In addition, such events require proper marketing strategies, which involve collaborations with media houses and proper publicity in the social networks such as Facebook, and Twitter among others. This paper entails an event plan for benefit-concert featuring all essential steps in organizing and managing a successful event. Love for Street Families: Feed and Clothe them Today Following the increase in the number of street families in our country due to the skyrocketing costs of living, leaving many people without food, homes, and health care, there is need to show affection to such people. This benefit-concert is a noble mission aimed at raising funds, materials and other forms of support to help feed and provide clothing for such families. The charitable concert is staged under the theme of love for all, which bolsters democracy through promotion of equity without favoritism based on gender of race. People must rise over all their differences in times of humanitarian crisis through giving as a sign of love for humanity. Therefore, this concert calls for participation by all students in our college and the neighboring colleges through contribution in all ways of donations including material items such as clothing, food, drugs, as well as money. Purpose The purpose of this concert is to raise funds and material things to feed and clothe at least 50, 000 street persons in our neighboring towns. The concert aims at generating over $100,000 and other forms of material items that will be channeled to the concerned population via Red Cross society. The purpose of this concert is in accordance with the university social responsibilities. The funds will be raised through a concert involving several established and upcoming musicians, comedians, and celebrities with street family history among other volunteer groups from various neighboring universities. Event Screening Several events were available for the same purpose such as open sport-day, dinner, a charity walk, nature walk, and a music concert. The choice of having the music concert came after deliberations with the university administration and all stakeholders. The choice considered several issues including the limited capital commitment, target of the event, operation screen, which considered revenues and skill, required and effectiveness of the chosen event (Jones 2010). The choice of organizing the music concert surpassed the rest due to its ability to meet the target amount with minimum expenses, skills, and instruments available from the music and entertainment departments of the schools, connections that could source volunteer performers and availability of a free venue. SWOT Analysis for the Music Concert Strengths The music department has the required instruments for the event and the current entertainment secretary has the necessary links in the music industry to facilitate sourcing of volunteer musicians with history in the street families. This concert has the ability to attract a lot of attention in the media houses, which could facilitate its airing. With the involvement of Red Cross society in the event, the event stands a great chance for approval by school and administration and other authorities. Weakness Involvement of musicians may present an obstacle in the approval of this event by administrations from the various universities for fear of student involvement in drugs. The capital commitment of $20,000 in the event may arise as a limitation in the event planning process. Opportunities This event stands a better opportunity for getting sponsorship from the school administration, musicians, as well as other celebrities. The event theme opens a good opportunity for many people neighboring the participating institutions to take part, hence a higher chance of meeting the event objectives. In case of failure to secure adequate performance from the music industry, students groups could provide the needed entertainment. Threats This event could get significant objections from school administration due to security and drug issues. With the event mainly targeting students for the contributions, difficulties may be experienced in achieving the target. The event organization may demand higher capital commitment than the available amount therefore resulting into other unplanned expenses that threaten success of the event. Event Brief Title: Love for Street Families: Feed and Clothe them Today Theme: Music-concert Participants: The event will involve students from the University of Bedfordshire and neighboring universities. Invitation letters will be drafted and send to the various surrounding universities to invite students to participate in the initiative. Organizers: The event will be organized by the students’ welfare in conjunction with the music and entertainment departments in the college. An organizing committee will be selected to oversee the event planning and implementation process. Performers: Performers will include volunteer musician from the local music industry that have some history in the street family life and student groups. Students will be given adequate time to prepare for the event through registering their groups for performance during the event. Students from other institutions will also get a similar opportunity to register their entertainment group with the event coordinator. Due to the limited capital commitment in the event, performers in this event will be rewarded with only certificates of participation. Since this event aims at generating maximum funds with limited capital input, performers from the music industry will be requested to wave all their performance fee or charges. Sponsors: The event sponsors will include the students’ welfares from the invited universities, local musicians and celebrities, marketers, the local government, private business owners, and the media fraternity. These sponsors will facilitate organization of the event as well as contributing towards the events targets. The local musicians will offer free performances, which will act as the incentive for attracting the needed attendants. On the other hand, the media will help in promoting and airing the event in order to reach as many people as possible. Finally, the University of Bedfordshire will sponsor the event with free venue, which would have added extra expenses in the event organization. Venue: The music concert will take at the University of Bedfordshire Assembly Hall. This venue was selected because of convenience to students, and cost efficacy since the university does not intend to charge any fee, its size and expected audience and ability to restrict entrance. Since the organizing committee shall establish an affordable price for the entry tickets, this venue will restrict attendance of the concert to only those with tickets. One of the largest lecture halls in the school will be selected as an alternative although the assembly hall is preferred due to its capacity and performance stage. Date and Time: The concert will take place on Saturday, 26 August 2011. The event will take place on a weekend to avoid disruption of routine school activities such as lectures and other school activities. This day will enable many students to participate as well as the teaching staff. Other days of the week were eliminated because of students’ convenience and interruptions in other school activities. The charity concert is planned to commence at 10:00am and conclude at 6:00pm, and there will be differing sessions facilitating breadth of interaction and performances. Activities: Since the music concert aims at raising funds through sale of the event tickets and other contributions during the event, most of the activities in this event will revolve around collection of donations from the various attendants and series of entertainments. Students from the different universities will be expected to stage various performances expected to drive attendants towards making their contributions. The budget will also cater for drinks and snacks to all participants and dinner for the invited guests. Event Budget Activities and Materials Cost in U.S. $ Security Details 4,000 Drinks and snacks for student participants 10,000 Dinner for the invited guests 2, 000 Marketing and event promotion 3,000 Miscellaneous 1, 000 Total expenses 20,000 Expected Outcome The music concert is expected to run for one day, displaying various donation activities in terms of money, cloths, food, skills, and services. Donations will bolster essential skills and services thus playing a critical role especially from the volunteer music celebrities, who will form a center of attraction for the student participants. Other important volunteer participants that will influence the outcome of this concert include student volunteers, sponsors, government agencies, marketers, businesses, venues, and media. The whole event is expected to contribute more than $100,000 within the one day. In addition, other donation will be obtained from other well-wishers in attendance as well as online donations from businesses and individuals. Material donations will also be collected during the event including foodstuffs, clothing, beddings, and other personal commodities. All materials and monetary donations will be forwarded to the Red Cross society for distribution. Event Promotion/Marketing Event marketing places events into the public arena with the way in which an event is marketed, forming a critical component of putting an event concept in the wider external environment context (Robinson, Wale & Dickson 2010). The effort put in marketing plays a critical role in success of the event organization plan hence the need for a significant investment in deciding the time of marketing mix to apply. The marketing mix involved in marketing an event includes product, price, place, positioning, and public relations. The product in this event includes the music concert with the price involving decision on how the entry tickets cost. The price of the tickets highly depends on the targeted audience, the number of expected audience, as well as the event target results. The event organizing committee in this case should set a ticket price that is affordable to students in order to attract as many audiences as possible. The committee should also ensure that the event purpose matches the event location taking into consideration venue price, location, and capacity and venue amenities. Selection of Bedfordshire University assembly hall took into consideration all the mentioned factors. Public relations in strategic marketing campaigns helps in research to design tools that add value to the marketing mix by developing media including press releases, publicity strategies, media kits, tickets and invitation lists, radio and media sports(Hoyle 2002). The positioning of an event ensures target audience knows about the event and sees value in supporting its objectives. Therefore, developing a promotional timeline and ticketing strategy form important steps to the success of the music concert and achievement of the set target. In promoting and publicizing the event, social media networks will play an important role as the event mainly targets university students who are quite active in them. This strategy will involve posting the event on the Facebook wall and emails and interpersonal invitations. The organizing committee will also design flayers and distribute them in the neighboring Universities in order to ensure that all individuals are aware of the noble course. Health, Safety, and Risk Assessment Risk assessment forms part of the parameters used in measuring the success of an event organization. During event planning, the organizers should identify hazards, assess the levels of risks, and establish control measures to minimize potential injury or harm to the attendants. The risk assessment process entails various key steps such as hazard identification, which takes into account potential hazards, risk assessment, and risk control steps (Shone & Parry 2004). In our case, the hazards to be identified include human related threats such as the type of crowd expected and level of crown participation, technological hazards such as mechanical and electrical, natural hazards including physical allocation, and environmental hazards such as ground impact (Bowdin, Allen & O’Toole 2006). The chosen event will involve high-level participation crowds, which requires high security detail to control crowd related accidents. The event organizers will also ensure that all electric connections are well covered to control electric accidents and disruptions. In case of extremely large crowds, the organizers could easily swap the venue with the area around the basketball coat where the crowd can be managed easily. The organizing committee with help of the University disaster preparedness team to ensure safety in the venue through proper installation of fire extinguishers and other rescue facilities. The Red Cross society will also play a critical role in providing first aid services for minor injuries during the concert. The organizing committee will appoint a team to check on the health safety issues of the food products donated in order to avert possibility of health problems to the beneficiaries of the donations. Since this concert mainly comprises of students, the committee shall ensure proper notifications on all alcoholic drinks and prohibition of drugs during the concert, which may increase the risks in the event. Evaluation Event evaluation form a key step of the event planning process as it determines the success of the event. Evaluation involves post-event appraisal, usually performed against original objectives both short and long-term (Masterman 2004). Short-term evaluation involves immediate evaluation of the costs, benefits, and impacts of the event itself. Therefore, after the event the organizing committee will assess the cost incurred in organizing this particular music concert against the total amount of donations to ascertain the success of the event. Later after the distribution of the donations to the street families, the committee will evaluate the long-term objectives of the event by getting relevant feedback. The feedback process will enable the organizing committee to determine whether the event met its main objectives of making the lives of some of the street families better. Conclusion This paper outlined the emerging niche for event organizations in the realm of commercial or even charitable organizations. The adoption of this thematic subject was bolstered by the rising need to provide support to charitable organizations as well as people affected by disasters, by which organizations have become a common means of raising funds for such purpose. Benefit-concerts have also shown great potential in raising funds especially for non- governmental organizations, charitable organizations, as well as individual needs. Benefit-concerts usually involve gala or performances featuring musicians, celebrities, comedians, and other performances that may attract large grounds of people to assist in a humanitarian crisis. The paper entails a case scenario founded on the unabated souring of the number of street families in our country due to the skyrocketing costs of living that has left many people without food, homes, and health care, there is need to show affection to such people. This benefit-concert is designed as a noble mission aimed at raising funds, materials and other forms of support to help feed and provide clothing for such families. The charitable concert is staged under the theme of love for all, which bolsters democracy through promotion of equity without favoritism based on gender of race. The choice of having the music concert came after deliberations with the university administration and all stakeholders. The choice factored several issues including the limited capital commitment, target of the event, operation screen, which considered revenues and skill, required and effectiveness of the chosen event. Organization of the event involves, setting of the objective and target amount, risk assessment, marketing and promotion of the event and evaluation of its success. References Bowdin, G., Allen, J & O’Toole, W 2006, Events management, (2nd edn.), Elsevier, Sydney. Genocide Intervention n.d, How to organize a concert, viewed 8 July 2011, < www.standnow.org/files/How_to_Organize_a_Concert.pdf> Hoyle, L 2002, Event marketing: how to successfully promote events, festivals, conventions, and expositions, John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ. Jones, M 2010, Sustainable event management: a practical guide, Earthscan, London. Masterman, G, 2004, Strategic sports event management: an international approach, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. Robinson, P., Wale, D & Dickson, G 2010, Events management, CABI, Cambridge, MA. Shone, A & Parry, B 2004, Successful event management: a practical handbook, Cengage Learning EMEA, Stamford, CT. Read More