Alright stop, collaborate and listen, I’m going to write some posts on planning a concert.  Note: a lot of what I write is based on my own mistakes in this process, so don’t make the same ones.

First - these posts are geared toward the groups who typically don’t plan concerts.  (Most schools have a programming or activities board that throws a yearly school wide concert. My alma mater’s Campus Activities Board is awesome, as they signed huge stars Lupe Fiasco, Girl Talk, NERD, and Kevin Rudolf in the past 2 years.)

This week’s concert planning topic - FINANCING.

1.  Get to as many student orgs and university offices as you can, and get commitments for whatever money they can give you, even in chunks as small as $500.  What do you offer them in return? Unless one of them is offering a huge amount of cash, don’t worry about naming rights, differing logo sizes, etc. because in my experience, that just gets too complicated.  A better method of reward for investment is to distribute tickets to contributing orgs in relation to the amount of money they put up; “if we all pull this off, we’ll all be partying together!”

2.  Set a drop dead date that you will end the “financing round.”  This date should be about five to six months before the expected date of the concert.  On this date, you will determine if you have enough dollar commitments to make a run at the concert. 

3. If you haven’t reached your minimum budget threshold (I’ll discuss in a later post) by the drop dead date, then call it off.  Don’t waste people’s time and money trying to pull things off on a shoestring budget. 

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Upcoming: The Budget, Middle Agents, Selecting an Artist, Promotion.