Probably one of the most important parts of planning anything is how to pay for it. Some people find budgeting and being in charge of the money a scary job. Yes, there can be a lot of meticulous planning required (especially when it comes to collecting and sorting 200 people’s money) and it is an essential job, but not impossible.

• Create a budget. Include costs of venue, activities, promotion, food, travel, etc. Even when booking an all-inclusive venue, make sure to add spots for promotion materials, decorations, and anything else that will be brought with you, and therefore not included in that bill. We have created a sample budget Excel sheet to help get you started.
• Figure cost per attendee. After securing the venue, you should have a better idea about how much the overall costs will be. This is different than budgeting, because you have to know about how many people will be splitting the bill. By this time you should have some rough idea about how many people would be willing to go. For example, don’t figure the cost per person for 500 if you expect no more than 50. No one is going to be very happy about you increasing the price tenfold. Make sure you include all costs (use your budget as a checklist to see that nothing gets left out) and account for any comped packages or fundraising. Our sample budget sheet has a formula built in to figure individual costs. Doing this for a large group can be tricky, but with good organization and budgeting, it can be done.