Q: I’'m wondering if LERN has any guidelines for third-party event management.

Is this something you could help us with?

Our College has a very non-traditional approach to continuing education but we utilize LERN's best practices as often as we are able.  Currently we are trying to establish a consistent practice for pricing organizations who want to utilize our campus for their program. For example, we offer several day camps on our campus but there's a community member who wants to rent our facilities for a day camp which features an NFL player.  It would be his camp, not ours. We wouldn't do any advertising or registrations, but we would have to screen and train staff, and provide health services. We are going back and forth with whether or not we should try to charge a percentage of their profit or a per head fee.

It's difficult to just charge rental fees because our rental prices don't incorporate administrative costs, and our camps require administrative attention related to department of health and state university mandates related to working with children.

I know this is somewhat beyond the scope of lifelong learning but thought I would still ask.  Do you have any advice related to third-party event management? Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

A: Thanks for your question. Here is LERN's recommendation:

Actually, this question is very consistent with pricing lifelong learning programs. Your fees should be based on your costs to provide the service--not on the projected income from the camp. You need to cover your costs and also take into account loss of other revenue if your staff's time is devoted to the camp project rather than to other income producing efforts.

While this is an opportunity for you, you should understand that this is an instance in which you could easily lose money. In order to be sure that you generate sufficient revenue for this rental you need to calculate ALL your costs for providing the facility including wages and benefits for all staff time, additional janitorial or cleaning fees, etc. This is your base cost. LERN's recommendation is that you calculate this fee and then double it to arrive at the cost you will charge to the camp sponsor.

If you charge only your base cost, you are still losing money, as the staff time devoted to supporting the camp program could be devoted to other income generation.