Event Planning

Events are a really exciting prospect, and there are so many options available to you. It’s common for committees to decide what type of event they want to organise without thinking carefully about whether it really is the best way to achieve their group’s aims, so when thinking about what kind of event you might want to hold, ensure you consider the following:

Will your idea support your group’s aims and objectives?
Check your Constitution so you don’t miss one!

Will your idea benefit your members?
Depending on the type of event, this benefit might be from an academic, emotional, physical, and/or mental perspective.

What audience outside your College, if any, will your event attract?
For some events, you might want to consider opening up to other Colleges too.

What feedback do you have from previous events?
Going back over this will help you understand what your members want out of your events.

Once you’ve got an idea, you can set about planning - but don’t jump right in. To hit the ground running, you need to know a few key things. As a committee, answer these five questions:

What sort of event are you expecting to run?
For example: a social; a winter formal; a club night; a fundraising quiz

When will your event take place?
Tip: Check semester dates so you know that you are organising at a suitable time. Make sure there aren’t any other major events going on that you might clash with - email events@yorksu.org to check! And be sure to give yourself plenty of time to get everything sorted.

Who will be involved?
Consider the type of people who will attend, and be sure to be realistic in terms of numbers. Think about who will be involved in organising the event too - we’d recommend defining organisational roles so that a clear point of contact is established early on.

Where will it take place?
The University and York SU can provide you with spaces of various sizes and types if you’d like to host your event on-campus. Match the profile of the event to the venue; consider the size, flexibility, location, and accessibility. Remember, the earlier you book your venue the better. See Room Booking for more.

How will your idea become reality?

Consider the resources you will need at every stage, from technology to furniture.

Action plans should be completed after the committee has agreed the aim of the event. Write the aim on the plan so you can keep referring back to it. Putting together an action plan at the beginning of the process will support you immeasurably in effective time management and organisation. It will help with the following:

Being clear on individual action points at the beginning of the planning process so they can be divided amongst the team equally.
This means there is less chance that a small group of people end up doing most of the work.

Being clear on action point deadlines and who should be completing each one.
This allows you to know your responsibilities and focus on them, but also allows committees to hold members to account if they aren’t pulling their weight.

Knowing how much work is involved in planning the event and how much time you’ll need to put aside to organise everything.
This leads to better time management, and therefore less stress!

Understanding exactly what you as an individual need to do, why it’s important to the bigger picture, and when you need to complete it by.

Write down everything you need to do to plan the event, no matter how small. Never assume that an action is so obvious that it does not need to be written down – people can forget the obvious! 

This often catches out even the most experienced event planner. Try not to underestimate the time you will need to plan your event, and remember it’s always better to have too much time than too little. The more time you give yourself, the less stressful (and more fun!) the experience will be. Some groups make an effort to plan the majority of their annual events when they first become committee members, so they can set out a strong timeline for the year ahead - but you can decide if that’s the right way forward for your College. 

There are some key things to consider when setting time limits on tasks, as there are some internal deadlines that cannot be changed. See the below section for York SU and University paperwork deadlines, which must be adhered to or your event will not take place, and remember that any suppliers you use will also need forms returned by a certain date. 

Bear in mind that bigger events will naturally require more time to plan, and think about the scale of the organisational team. A small team will mean a lot of work for individuals, but a big team means that it could be harder to make important decisions, and will require a lot of coordination. Consider other commitments your team members have when delegating jobs.

There are different sets of forms depending on the type of event you’re hosting. Please note the following:

All events will need both a Risk Assessment and a Budget

On-campus events require an Events Management Form at least 21 days in advance of your event. See the EMF page for further guidance.

If you’re booking rooms, you’ll need to do this as early as possible. See the Room Booking page for further guidance.

To ensure your event is successful, you’ll need a detailed budget for it. Budgets can look complicated, but at their most basic they are a list of all the money you have and all the money you need. This helps you to identify all the resources you need to make it happen, how much money it will cost, and the funds you’ll need to raise. You can use our budget template on our Budgeting page to help track your spending for your event, and you’ll submit this to the Community Coordinator in advance of making bookings. 

You have a duty of care to the attendees of your event. ‘Duty of care’ is a legal term; it means you have a legal responsibility for making sure that those who attend or are affected by your event are kept as safe as possible. This is done through a process of risk assessment.

Risk Assessments are needed for events that are outside of your normal activity. For guidance on whether you will need a Risk Assessment, contact our Health and Safety Coordinator - Geoff Ward.

Risk Assessments sound complicated, but they don’t have to be. See the Risk Assessment page of our Health and Safety Guidance for support; here you will also find a blank Risk Assessment template available for you to use.

A contract is a legally binding agreement between parties. You might use contracts for agreements between you and venues or suppliers for larger scale events. See our Contracts page for more details.

Promotion is key to the success of any event - how will students know what is happening? Take a look at our Publicity and Marketing page for further guidance on how to promote your event and how we can support this. 

You can sell tickets to your event online through the York SU website by making an Event Application. See our Event Application page for guidance on how to do this.

We recommend our platform over other external ticket-selling sites; although York SU will charge a small booking fee as card transactions cost money, this is less than other ticket sites, and we can support you if something goes wrong. See our Ticketing page for information on charges and how finance handles money from ticket sales.

You can also choose to sell tickets in person if you wish. You can then pay in the money to the York SU Finance Office. 

After all that effort, it’s finally the day before the event! Here are a few suggestions to ensure you and your team are as prepared as possible before the big day:

Run through the action plan with everyone to remind them of their roles and responsibilities

If you’re the Responsible Person, make sure you know what everyone else’s roles are too!

Are you still waiting on equipment to be delivered? How are you going to set it up in the venue?

Have you got enough interest from people or sold enough tickets?

Have you briefed the appropriate people about the risk assessment? If not, how will you do this? 

Do you know what to do if something goes wrong? 

Have you got contact details for everyone that you need them for? 

Try to get some rest before the big day! And once your event kicks off, try not to get too stressed out. If you’ve planned well, it should run smoothly - so relax, feel confident, and enjoy it!

This is a really important step, and one that’s often forgotten. Regardless of how well the event ran and whether or not you managed to achieve the aim, spending a bit of time evaluating what went well and what could have gone better will help you, and the future committee, next time. Furthermore, collecting monitoring data will enable you to prove the positive impact of your event.

Data Collection 

Here are a few suggestions of the kind of data you could collect, but you might think of other things that are more specific to your event. See below for ideas on how to collect the information.

Was your event value for money?

Did you over- or under-spend?

If it was a fundraising event, how much money did you raise?

How many people attended?

How diverse was your audience?
Think about things like gender, ethnicity, age, student status, etc, to see if you can improve your engagement with different groups.

What impact did the event have?
You can assess this by asking individuals who attended what impact it had on them, or by looking at other beneficiaries such as charities or the local community.

Did people enjoy themselves?
This sounds basic, but it’s crucial! Try to gather positive quotes and images during the event from attendees or stakeholders such as charities or the University

How can you collect Monitoring Information? 

So you know the data that you want to collect - that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get hold of! Here are a few ways you can gather the information you need:

Sell tickets via the York SU website so you know exactly how many people attended.
Not everyone who buys a ticket will necessarily attend, so you might also want to count people as they come in.

Talk to attendees at the event and ask for feedback.
You could think about including a feedback box or board for people to write their thoughts.

You could also get contact details of attendees and send them a short survey asking for their thoughts. You could use the questions above to guide your survey.
Note: You’ll need to have their permission to send them information. 

Self-evaluating your event 

The attendees aren’t the only people who matter when evaluating your event - so do the people who organised it! Consider the same questions as a committee; think about your budget, timescales, venue, pricing, date/time, promotion and marketing, theme, and even evaluate your monitoring data. It’s also worth discussing how you worked as a team and the different roles you took on. What would you take forward next time? What would you do differently? Write your evaluation down as a reference for yourself or the next committee who may want to organise a similar event in the future.