Getting Help For Your Event: Employees, Vendors & Sponsors

All the while you are planning and organizing an event, you will have to deal and communicate with people. The ones with whom you’d be always in contact with, are explored here:

ASSOCIATES: If you are planning for anything but a small event, you’d require people to help you with the event. Following are the steps on hiring associates for your event:

• Itemize the needs for your event, which would require a service person.
• Estimate the number of associates needed for the event. Less than required would lead to poor service, more than required would mean wasteful costs.
• Create job descriptions for the associates so that they are responsible for specific tasks in the event. Mention the skills necessary for the job. Make sure the duties don’t overlap for the associates, because that can lead to confusion.
• Before the event, there should be a training cum dry run to ensure everyone understands their tasks.
• Make sure that there is a medium of communication amongst the associates and yourself. Your correspondence regarding the hiring, training, delegating work, rewarding, and praising must be clear and thorough.

VENDORS: Every event organizer would need a vendor for goods and services at one time or another. Now, the type of products and services required would majorly depend on the nature and scope of the event. Here are a few steps on dealing with vendors:

• Analyze your needs and sources, so that you know what is required, and what is available
• Locate the suppliers and vendors, so that you can approach them with your needs
• Determine the selection criteria – what you require for your event can be translated into standards, which can narrow down the vendors.
• Solicit quotations and proposals from vendors
• Issue and manage the contracts

It is advisable to meet multiple vendors because each has different capabilities, price, and strength. It can help you figure out what will suit your needs.

SPONSORS: For the more elaborate events, you would require all the help and association you can get. It would help if you got an organization that can work as a partner to get you a venue, staff, or funds in return for marketing their service or product. Getting sponsors is a great way to boost your event.

First, make a list of all such organizations that can contribute to your event. They would find this opportunity valuable.

Second, choose all the organizations that can give your audience some value.

Third, write a letter to these organizations regarding what they can get from this sponsorship. If required, you must present your case in person to some of these organizations.

It would be best if you prepared your case well enough to attach an absolute value assigned to the sponsorship deal for both the audience and the sponsors.

Sponsorship can come to you in different ways. You never know who is watching you, so be ‘sponsor-ready’ at all times.

MILLETTE GRANVILLE