Organising Pagan Events

Organising events for the pagan community sounds like a really fun idea, but are you really, really willing to put in the long hard hours of organising, doing paperwork, keeping everyone updated, answering emails, the marketing, the caterings, the location management, the legal work and research, the budgeting, the problem solving and dealing with criticism? Because that's event organising. Still want to organise one?

THE REASON FOR RUNNING
First of all, just like running a ritual, you gotta really make sure you have a damn good reason for running one. Have a look at what is already being run in the community. Is your idea already being run? Then listen to what people are saying about the community they are in - is your event actually needed? Then look at dates other events are being run - is there space in the year for you to run it in between everyone else? If you are charging for your event, remember you to leave a good a mount of time between other events in the community to give people the time to save up for the ticket price. The majority of pagans tend to be on the poor side, or have other things they need to save up for.

EXPERIENCE AND HELP
Once you have a good idea, that isn't already being run, is needed, at a good time of the year, you need to think about your own experience and others. What are your strong points and weak points? Can you run good rituals? Are you good at organising? Are you use to dealing with clients and can apply this skill to liaise with workshop runners, location managers, caterers etc.? There are some groups/individuals in the community who are happy to be suggested event ideas and take the running off your hands while you are still involved some way.

It is never a good idea to run a large event by yourself (For every approximately ten people there should be a helper.) Time to start seeking some help! Look for people who have the experience you need to fill in your weak points. Maybe approach active groups. Get everyone on the same page and start planning. Now obviously pagan organiser's don't tend to have such organisational titles as I am about to use - but their easier to use to explain the responsibilities that can be split up. For a large event it's a good idea to have a General Manager (looking after the timeline, delegating jobs, organising the locations, and liaising with the workshop coordinators.) the Marketing Director (I sometimes do the General Manager and Marketing Director job at the same time but be warned it's A LOT of work and I do recommend at least having someone else helping or being in charge of coding the website, like I do.) A Caterer, a Treasurer, someone in charge of the running of the ritual, a Transport Organiser and a Safety Officer. Obviously there jobs can be combined or thinned out into more jobs depending on the number of people. You might need to put a different person in charge of different activities as well.

THE PLANNING BEGINS
The Timetable and Deadlines:
Write yourself a list of everything you can think of that needs to be researched, organised, confirmed, found, solved etc. Then put deadlines on all of them. Then designate jobs to everyone. Set up a calender (using Google Calender is fantastic because you can invite all of our organisers to share the calender and keep up to date. Google Documents is also a very handy tools for sharing all the paperwork and keeping it organised.)

Booking Locations
The First issue you might come upon is Public Liability. Most locations need this for you to hire them. But there are ways to get around of it. A lot of locations you hire from a local council can include public liability for a small charge. And there is another bonus to going through a local council for your location - if you can prove you are running a 'community' event, you can get up to 50% off the rate!

If you are running over a couple of days without accommodation in between, make sure you ask if there is a fee for keeping the location unused between days. It's annoying to have to pay more, but it's better then rocking up the next day and finding a complaint about still being set up, possible fines, or your stuff missing!

Write yourself a list of everything you would like in a location before you go searching. A few are:
- accommodation for a certain amount of people
- areas for rainy day back up plans
- an area for ritual if you're holding one
- area's for caterer's to prepare
- enough space for people to eat/sit/sleep etc.
- parking
- handicapped facilities
Don't be shy to ask questions! Always try to go and look at the location before booking. Photo's can make things seem larger then they actually are (advertisers really like those wide angled lenses!)

Organising Workshops and Lectures
Try to keep it interesting. There a lot of workshops that have been done to death, but some of these are because people really enjoy them! The rest are because no one can think of anything else to do!

There is a couple of ways you can go about this. The first is setting a theme, contacting known workshop coordinators and asking if they can run something according to the theme. Another way is that you figure out what workshops you need and then find the appropriate people. The last is to just send out a note to workshop coordinators asking what they have run before or would like to run and playing pick and mix.

A lot of events rely heavily on workshops so make sure you have a backup plan or two - you never know what bad luck might strike down on an unlucky teacher and people have paid good money to come your event! Good, quick back ups are craft activities or open discussions as they don't need too much pre-prep. (Make sure you don't do any dangerous craft activities. If someone hurts themselves you will have to pay the excess on the public liability or deal with a court case! So no knives!)

Keep your workshop coordinators updating with the organising plans as well. Just occasional updates will keep their faith in the event going ahead. usually they have been to so many events before that they can even give you some pointers! I like to organise a Presenters Meeting before the event - this allows everyone to be on the same page, allow the event to run a lot more smoothly for participants, know what else is being presented, avoiding double ups and references to other workshops to save time if needed.

BUDGETING
So you have the idea, you have prices on the location, and you have your workshop people with the thumbs up. Time to figure out the rest of the budget!

Make a list of everything you will need to buy for the event. Ask the caterer for their budgeting (ask them for a 50 and 100 person budget), ask the ritual coordinater if there is any props they can't chase down and need bought. Is there transport hire needed? Printing costs? Props that workshop coordinators need? Think outside the box.

Then sit down with your treasurer and research all of the pricing. Most of this can be done online these days which can save a lot of time. Then try to estimate how many people may come. Don't be big headed because you'll lose money, but don't under estimate and end up having the charge too much per ticket to cover costs. Soon you will have your price per head cost.

Common prices in the community are around $150 for a weekend including accommodation, $100 without and $50 for a full day. (We recently charged $70 pp for a weekend with no accommodation.)

MARKETING
So here we go! We're finally getting the news out there! This is the make or break time. make sure you close ticket sales before final payments on locations are due if possible so you can cancel if you don't get the numbers without lose too much.

There are many ways you can market your event around the community:
- Facebook walls, groups, events etc.
- Yahoo eGroups
- Email organisations and ask them to put out the word to their members
- Email your mates and ask them to the spread the word
- Put advertisements into free pagan magazines and eZines
- Ask pagan websites to put up the information for you
- Rock up to pagan events and gatherings and advertise if given the opportunity (at some circle people ask if there is any announcements and that's your chance). if you can't make it to the gathering, ask someone else to announce it for you.
- Put brochures in pagan stores
- Set up a website and ask people to link to it
... and there's just a few!

Remember to make sure all your information is correct and in the advertising before spreading the word. You don't want to have to run around fixing up mistakes after sending out so much and it can be really embarrassing! Ask a couple of people to look over it first.

AND OFF YOU GO
By this point you should have a fair idea what's going on, what needs to be done, and how everything will run. Have a couple of Organiser's Meeting's before the event and even start up a eGroup for your presenters and organisers to all keep up to date and email each other easily. Carry around a little notebook with you - you will be surprised how many little thoughts and things you need to do pop into your head that will disappear very quickly!

Good luck!!!