All Clubs and Societies host socials, events and trips during the year to help engage their members and encourage them to socialise. This section will be focusing on the planning aspect looking at budgets and promotion to help make them as successful as possible. We hope the information provided will equip you with the necessary tools to allow you to plan and deliver a variety of different events.

Planning

First things first, anything that is organised by a club/society that is outside of students normally do needs to be risk assessed. Although this can be seen as a bit of a hassle in order for you to run an event it is the most important part of planning. Although some activities will pose more risk than others, all activities must be risk assessed. However if the activity your club/society is running is one that happens on a regular occurrence, you can just complete one risk assessment and use this over and over again as long as it has been approved (Risk Assessments will be reviewed every 12 months).

Risk assessments are a really important way to ensure that all aspect of everyone’s safety have been considered, avoid any injuries and mitigate any risks during events. All risk assessments will be checked by the Student Development Coordinator, and SU staff are to help you complete a risk assessment if you are struggling or are unsure.

When planning an event you should think about:

• Assigning responsibilities for different organisational roles from within your committee to help spread the work
• Venue Hire – Please book your venue in plenty of time. You should not advertise an event without booking the venue first, this will only cause stress and hassle for yourselves but could also result in a lot of disappointed club/society members if the event doesn’t go ahead.
• Budget – If you are planning to buy stuff for the event please use a financial planner. You should note down beforehand your projected expenditure and then check with the SU finance department if you have enough money in your accounts. If you don’t, don’t be afraid to cancel an event, we’d rather you do this than have the club/society in debt.
• Promotion – The key to a good event is good promotion. Make sure current club/society members are informed well in advance so that they are aware of it, this can be done through email, Facebook, twitter, texts, phone calls etc. Other good ways to promote your events to new students is to hand out flyers and posters around campus and don’t be afraid to ask the SU for help if you’re unsure!
• Evaluate – A useful exercise is to evaluate the event after it has happened, this will give you the chance to record what went well and what went badly which will give you an overview of how to improve your events going forward. Regular committee meetings would be the perfect place to discuss this.

It’s also worth noting that if you’re planning to hold the event off campus, the venue/company you’re holding it with will want you to sign some sort of contract or agreement. If this is the case please bring it into the Students’ Union for checking before signing, many companies like to add extra charges that with a bit of care can be easily avoided.