Events are a great way to promote a brand or raise awareness for a charity or political cause. While many people might choose to arrange their events themselves, for those who want to take the stress out of event planning or are trying to pull off a big-scale event, hiring a professional event planner. If your passion is putting together excellent soirees and fundraising events, you might be interested in starting a non-profit event planning business yourself. If so, here are some things you will need to think about to make sure it’s a success.
A Great Business Plan
The first step you need to take for any new business idea is to formulate a strong business plan. This will include carrying out plenty of market research to help you better understand your demographic and the industry as a whole. You will need to figure out how much your overheads will cost. You’ll also need to think about marketing strategies, as well as any legal obligations you will have as a business and employer, and how you will implement these in your operations. You will need your business plan to secure funding for your business, so make sure this is completed before you apply for loans or meet with potential investors.
Having the Right Tools in Place
There are a lot of areas to cover when it comes to business management, and although your passion might lie with planning events, as a business owner, you will need to stay on top of these administrative duties as well. You can use business software such as accounting programs to help you manage business finances, HR software to help manage your employees, and even software that can help to organize your weekly, monthly, and yearly calendars. As an event planning business, you might also want to think about using event planning software to help you keep on top of each event you’re running.
Hiring the Right People
You can’t manage these events alone, which is why hiring the right team of people to help you manage this organization is important. If you are working with a low budget, you might want to think about asking for volunteers to help you or using internship schemes that might be more affordable. However, you will need to have a team of paid employees to work with you full time, so remember to factor in these wages into your plan when you apply for funding. The people you bring on board should also be passionate not just about events but for raising awareness for these charitable or political causes that you will be focusing on.
Networking
Marketing your non-profit event planning business will be important, and you can use cheap and free tools like social media to do this or even reach out to local press and relevant bloggers to help you with this. However, networking will also be a key component in raising the awareness of your business and connecting with the right people who might need your services. Going to relevant conferences and other organized networking opportunities with charity leaders or other people who might need your services will help you with this.
If you would love to run a non-profit event management business to help charities and other important causes to raise awareness, consider the tips above to help you get started.
