Plan your event
The start-up of an event includes several elements that are summarized in a project plan. It is an important steering document for planning, implementing and evaluating an event, and to ensure that all stakeholders are working in the same direction.
Create a Project plan where you respond to the applicable questions below:
- Project background, purpose, goals
Purpose and objectives of the project: Why is the event being held and for who? What do you want to achieve? What are the expectations? Set measurable targets. Plan for follow-up and how the evaluation should be done.
- Budget
How will the event be funded and what costs are involved? Don´t forget that your own time is a cost.
Set up a budget that that you update continously. Some of the aspects below might apply, and should be included.
How will the event be funded?
- How much has the school allocated for the event?
- Participation fees: Should the guests pay for their attandance? What fee level is reasonable considering the target group and what they get, for example lunch and fikas?
- Sponsorship support, grants and exhibitor income: Which sponsors and contributors are possible to contact?
- How to handle any surplus or deficit?
- If the paying participants are coming from abroad; how will their payments be handled?
Example of costs that can be involved in an event:
- Catering
- Hire of technical equipement
- Design of invitations and other graphical components
- Extra cleaning
- Reimbursement to student workers
- Gifts to the speakers
- Hotel and travel expenses
Contact your finance officer to out which organization number and activity number applies, as well as what VAT-rate that should be applied for that specific event.
3. Target audience
- Who should attend the event? Is it open for everyone in terms of staff and students?
- Which countries are the participants expected to come from, is it a national or
international target group? - Expected number of participants? Is the idea to invite accompanying guests?
- Will there be any "VIP"-guests that should be handled and targeted in a specific way?
- Time management
When should the event take place? Check that the event is not clashing with any competing/similar events at that time.
Estimate all things that needs to be done and plan after that. Set up a timeline and see if you have time to do everything you want or if you need to do something different. Don’t forget to include all work that you need to do after the event in terms of invoices, cleaning, moving back things etc. - Roles, responsibilities, tasks, staffing
- Set up a project group for the event: Who should work with event; both in the planning phase and during the event?
- Should there be a steering group in the planning phase?
- Is the event co-hosted with a partner organization or similar?
- If so, be very clear about the responsibilites for each one of you, and how the decision process is looking.
- Take GDPR into consideration at all times.
- How any deficit or surplus in the budget should be handeld.
- Example of duties during the event:
- Welcoming and checking-in the guests
- Responsible for the wardrobe
- Hand out program and table seating
- Do you need student ambassadors to help out during the event? Get in touch with simone.westergard@hhs.se and malin.nilsson.gauffin@hhs.se and they will put you in contact with our BSc and MSc student ambassadors. The remuneration is paid by the organizer.
- Follow-up, evaluation, and completion of the project (see After the event-section as well)
After the event, it is a good idea to send out a questionnaire/survey to the participants with some questions about what they thought of the event.
Make an evaluation for internal purposes: What was good? What can we do differently next time? Did we acheieve our obectives?