I am an active member of a local skiing club for which I organize several skiing courses during the winter season. Here are the top 3 categories of problems I regularly face:

1. Promoting the event
2. Keeping an up-to-date list of participants
3. Billing

Promoting the event

The skiing club has a very loyal fan-base. Also, it is quite well known in the region. To promote the events that the club offers, anyone who participated in an event over the past three years receives a copy of the skiing club’s winter season program by mail. Also, the skiing club has a quite up-to-date website where potential partipants can get info.

The problem starts when there are too few participants for a particular event or if there are seats left which should be filled. It is quite difficult and costly to attract new participants after the program has been printed and distributed initially.

Consequently, several events had to be cancelled over the past years due to too few participants. This has cost the club also some considerable amount of money.

Keeping an up-to-date list of participants

Participants register for an event by sending in a registration form with the details of the participant as well as the payment details. It is also possible to register by calling me up or email me, however, due to regulations, the registration form still needs to be handed in (see billing problems below).

For me as organizer of the event, the challenge is then to keep an up-to-date list of participants. I am using either a plain paper list or an Excel sheet for that. Every time a new participant registers for the event, I am adding the participants details to the list.

• When there are not more free seats, I have to get in touch with the interestee and let him know that he/she is on the waiting list now
• When a already registered participant decides to not participate for a valid reason, I remove him from the list. All other participants move up one place in the list. If there are any interestees on the waiting list, I get in touch with them either by email or phone, let them know that a seat is available and add them if they confirm their participation.

The number of participants normally ranges from 10 to 50. In average, I need to follow up with 20% of the participants because they have questions or want to de-register from the event.

The list of participants contains several details which are required for the further organization of the event and billing. For organizational purposes, for example, we need the age of the participant, their sports gear (ski, snowboard, other) and their level of experience (beginner to pro) so that it is easier to form groups later. For the latter, Excel is definitively of help, but also not a silver bullet.

Billing

As payment method, the club makes use of direct debits. This payment method is quite popular in Germany. However, it requires a signature of the holder of the bank account to authorize the payment. One of the advantages of direct debits is that payments can be drawn only after the event has taken place. Consequently, the amount of money transfers can be limited to at most one per participant. If the participants were charged up-front, it would be necessary to make a lot of back payments, especially when participants de-register or when an event has to be cancelled.

In quite some cases, the payment details are wrong or not consistent which leads to problems when the direct debits are drawn. Lately, due to the introduction of the “single European payment method” (SEPA), bank account numbers got longer which leads to more typos and errors during transfer of the numbers.

What are your experiences?

I would be interested if you have similar or other problems when it comes to organizing events. Leave a comment or drop me a note via email on the kind of event and your issues. I am happy to discuss with you on how to improve.