…And What About the Budget?

You’ve decided to move your in-person event to an online experience. You’ve revamped the schedule, requested recordings from speakers, and contracted an online platform provider. That ought to do it, right? Not even close. I can’t even begin to tell you what’s missing from the list. (Actually I can, you should start back at the beginning of the blog posts and get caught up.) What I hear most people lamenting about are the additional expenses they never even considered. Who would have thought that an online event can still be incredibly costly?

Some of the in-person budget lines can be reallocated to fit the online event: speaker honorariums are probably the same. Perhaps you can move funds from production, venue, or meals…nope. You could move the…no, not that either. Yep, you’re going to need that too.

Here are a couple of budget items to make sure you consider so they don’t catch you off guard when moving your in-person event to an online one:

• Design time – If you have never had an online platform or website designed for an online event before, expect exponentially more time spent on design than you think. Once it’s designed, unless you really want to break the bank, be sure to clear YOUR schedule to check and recheck links to website, documents, and videos and review the pages for grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
• Video editing time – This may either mean your on-staff video editor just got a huge raise, it hiring additional staff, or you’re engaging a new contractor. Why? You now have mostly pre-recorded content for your event. Based on how long your event is, your content could need quite a bit of editing for not only quality, but also to have title slides, visual aids, or bumpers added. 
• Broadcast location expenses – If you are planning to host the event as a live broadcast, where are you going to do that? Are you renting anything? Do you need to fly staff, a production team, or their equipment anywhere? Then, as with anything of this nature, there are hotel rooms, travel expenses, meals, and other unforeseen expenses that are incurred.
• Cancellation penalties – Review the contracts you have in place with in-person event venues and service providers. You could potentially incur penalty costs when cancelling the event. This was a rough lesson for some organizations to learn in 2020 and 2021. You may only have the option to reschedule for a future year. Some contracts have a scaling penalty rate based on time from the event dates. You might also need to consider legal fees if hiring a lawyer to help you.

I’d be happy to share other areas of the budget you might want to keep an eye on, especially if you work for a non-profit or association. Email me and let’s talk.

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