July 07, 2019

5 Things to Consider Before Throwing a Campus Event

Planning a campus event takes more than creativity. You’ll need to develop a well-executed plan to successfully plan a campus event your colleagues will truly enjoy. If you’re the student activity coordinator for your university, it can be challenging to determine an event idea that will best showcase your school’s fun side.

Therefore, if you’re looking for inspiration to plan the next big campus event for your school, keep reading below to learn more.

1. Budget

Every university in the country has a defined budget for student activities. No matter how much your budget is, it’s up to you to make it work for the enjoyment of the entire student body.

To do this, you’ll have to first understand what’s not realistic for your budget. For example, if you have a limited activity budget, going skydiving may be out of the question. It’s important to remember that you should never try anything that will eat away at a tremendous part of your budget.

Ideally, you should be able to plan an event and have some extra financial maneuverability. Not only will this help you easily gain approval from your school, but it will also encourage you to use more creativity and planning to get the most bang for your institution’s buck.

2. Student Interest

One of the most difficult things to do when planning an event is appealing to the majority while considering the minority. Especially on a college campus, participation is important, so you’ll need to gauge the interest of every student and evaluate them the same.

One way you can do this is by creating a formal survey that is only meant to gain the interests of your entire student body. For example, you can produce a survey that asks students what type of event would they skip class for. While you aren’t encouraging anyone to actually skip class, you would be understanding the interests of every student so you can make the most informed decision.

3. Attendees

After you have gauged the interest of your student body, it’s now time to get a number for how many people you plan on attending a hypothetical event. You can choose to do this via a survey, or you can announce your intentions to plan a campus event in a student body meeting.

Getting a correct estimate for the number of attendees is essential for a budgetary standpoint, and it will also allow you to decide if a particular event idea is worth it.

Therefore, put a valiant effort in estimating the number of students that will participate in an event so you can give the entire student body something they will enjoy with each other.

4. Shareability

As the student activity coordinator, it’s not only your job to organize campus events for students, but it’s also your responsibility to make sure your university is presented in the best light.

Campus events should always be posted on social media, mainly because people are always on social posting about their daily lives. Before throwing your next campus event, ask yourself “are people going to post pictures on social media?”

Events with high shareability will earn you favor from your university, inspire other students to join in on the fun, and encourage people to enroll.

5. Cohesiveness

Ultimately, planning events take a lot of time. If you take too long to plan something, you may lose interest with the student body, and rushing to make plans is both sloppy and counterproductive.

This is why it’s important to only consider cohesive event ideas, and here’s how you can do it.

• Realistic Factor – How realistic is your idea? How much time and effort will be needed to make it happen? Create a cost-benefit analysis to assess the positives and negatives of going through with one of your ideas and make comparisons before coming with a decision.
• Preparation Factor – Once the event has been planned, how will it be managed and carried out? Will there be food, extra entertainment, etc? Have all of these considerations thought of and properly planned for.
• Incident Factor – Sometimes, unfortunate things do happen. Do you have everything taken care of if an emergency takes place during your event?

Plan Your Next Campus Event Today!

As you can see, planning a campus event takes a lot of preparation and creativity. Fortunately, you can stay on top of your student activity duties by planning your next campus event at Artificial Ice Events.

Give us a call today at (800) 275-0185 to receive a free quote.