samber/dev-event-organizer-skillsチェック済み
SKILL DETAIL
event-budget
samber/dev-event-organizer-skills/event-budget
Build the budget and P&L for a technical event - every cost line split into fixed and per-head, the revenue mix against the funding model, a Good/Better/Best scope-tier ladder so break-even has three answers instead of one, a contingency sized as a stacked floor, pad and downgrade ladder whose cuts also price lost sponsor reach, a cross-edition reserve policy, annual funding decoupled from single events, and outflows scheduled against the dates sponsor and ticket money actually lands. Use whenever asked to build an event budget, model conference or hackathon costs, find break-even, size a contingency reserve, set a reserve or surplus policy across editions, fund a recurring meetup series annually, plan event cash flow, or decide what to cut when revenue falls short. Consumes prices and real vendor quotes, never sets them. Do NOT use to set ticket or sponsor prices - use samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-ticket-pricing or samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-sponsor-pricing.
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Installation
npx skills add https://github.com/samber/dev-event-organizer-skills --skill event-budget
スキルファイル
SKILL.md
最終同期 · 2026/10/18
evals/evals.json›
{
"skill_name": "event-budget",
"evals": [
{
"id": 1,
"prompt": "I'm organizing KernelKraft Conf, a two-day community conference in Porto next June. 500 people have registered interest through our meetup group, and last year's similar events in our network saw about 78% of registrants actually turn up. We have one real number: a venue quote from October 14th covering the main hall plus two breakout rooms. Catering, AV, badges, swag - no quotes yet, so just fill in reasonable market prices so the board sees a complete budget. Our fiscal sponsor takes 8% of everything, and card processing fees are on top of that. We plan to announce the date publicly next week; the bank account through the fiscal sponsor isn't live yet, should be a few weeks out. Sponsors should cover most of the costs - so what should tickets cost to close the rest?",
"expected_output": "A budget model that names the ticketed format and posture up front, budgets per-head lines off the ~390 expected show-up, carries the dated venue quote and explicit placeholders instead of invented prices, deducts the host share and processing fees off the top on both rails, defines a ticket revenue target for handoff rather than setting a price, costs three scope tiers with break-even each, schedules cash flow with its lowest point, flags the date announcement against the missing money-processing setup, and writes the tax question as a question.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"The first line of the model names the format as ticketed and states the revenue posture assumed",
"Per-head quantities are computed from the expected show-up figure (about 390), never from the 500 registrations",
"Each cost line is classified fixed or per-head with its per-head driver named",
"Speaker expenses are carried under a per-speaker driver, named as distinct from both fixed lines and per-attendee lines",
"The venue line carries the dated October 14 quote",
"Catering, AV, badges and swag are carried as explicit 'no quote yet' placeholders or ranges - no invented market prices despite the request to fill them in",
"The fiscal sponsor's 8% share and card processing fees are deducted off the top, applied to both the ticket rail and the sponsor rail, before any cost line is funded",
"No ticket price is set; instead a ticket revenue target (expenses minus the sponsorship share) plus paid capacity after comps is defined for handoff to ticket pricing",
"Sponsorship is set as a share target for handoff to sponsor pricing; no tier split is produced here",
"Three scope tiers (Good/Better/Best or equivalent) are each fully costed with a separate break-even",
"A dated cash-flow schedule appears with its lowest cash point identified",
"The response warns against announcing the date before a working way to process money exists, given the account is not live",
"A total cost per head figure is computed from the fixed/per-head cut",
"The tax and jurisdiction question is written as an open question routed to the fiscal sponsor or an accountant, not answered with a rate or rule"
]
},
{
"id": 2,
"prompt": "I'm treasurer for Datagrove Summit, a 400-person data engineering conference. Our board wants me to apply the standard industry contingency percentage to the budget before they sign off. I've seen 10% and 15% cited in event planning blogs - which one is the actual convention for conferences our size? We're a recurring annual event, third edition, and we kept our fully costed budget versions and per-line actuals from the last two years.",
"expected_output": "A refusal to certify any percentage as an event-industry convention, replaced by a contingency built from three composing tools - an absolute cash floor, a pad on estimates labelled as borrowed from startup modelling, and a Good/Better/Best downgrade ladder with dated revenue checkpoints - with the ladder reused cheaply from prior editions and the resulting figure labelled self-set.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Declines to present any contingency percentage as an event-industry convention, stating no such convention exists",
"Does not simply endorse 10% or 15% to satisfy the board",
"Presents three contingency tools: an absolute floor, a pad on estimates, and a downgrade ladder",
"The three tools are presented as composing together in one budget, with no ranking among them",
"The floor is described as an absolute minimum cash reserve held regardless of budget size, not a percentage of budget",
"The pad is explicitly labelled as coming from startup financial modelling rather than event practice",
"The pad is described as protecting against line-item underestimation, distinguished from revenue shortfall",
"The downgrade ladder is identified as the only tool that absorbs a whole-event revenue shortfall rather than a line-item miss",
"The ladder is described as the scope tiers with dated checkpoints driven by revenue actually received",
"The response notes that a recurring event with prior costed tiers can reuse them, making the ladder cheap this edition",
"The final contingency figure is labelled self-set rather than published or standard",
"Contingency drawn against contingency held across editions is proposed as the calibration read (never drawn suggests the floor is oversized; fully drawn suggests the pad is undersized)"
]
},
{
"id": 3,
"prompt": "TensorTide Conf is nine weeks out and sponsorship has landed at 55% of target. My co-organizer wants to act fast: cancel the venue contract and move to a cheaper space, and halve the catering order today. Current commitments: the venue is signed with a food-and-beverage minimum attached, the catering guarantee locks in three weeks, an evening afterparty is booked but cancellable free of charge until next month, and we budgeted a premium swag upgrade that hasn't been ordered yet. We also debated just bumping the ticket price 30% to cover the gap. What's the right sequence?",
"expected_output": "A cut sequence that takes discretionary extras first, per-head quantities second within the three-week lock window, and fixed structural lines last; it rejects the venue switch as the most dangerous move because minimums are owed on the commitment, refuses the ticket price bump as a decision owned elsewhere, and anchors every cut to dates.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Discretionary extras - the afterparty and the swag upgrade - are cut first",
"Per-head variable quantities (catering covers) come second, and only because the guarantee has not locked; the three-week lock date is cited as the window",
"Fixed structural lines, the venue above all, come last in the sequence",
"The co-organizer's venue-switch plan is rejected or flagged as the most dangerous move on the table",
"Explains that food-and-beverage minimums and attrition are owed on what was committed, not on what turns up, so cancelling can cost more than it saves",
"Does not assume the venue minimum can be renegotiated; committed minimums are treated as firm",
"The cut sequence is anchored to dates from the cash-flow schedule, not stated in the abstract",
"The 30% ticket price bump is refused as a pricing decision this analysis does not own; the ticket target is changed and handed to the pricing decision instead",
"The cut order is framed as the content of the pre-priced scope-tier ladder, not invented as a fresh menu",
"The catering cut is sized against the expected show-up figure and the lock date rather than an arbitrary halving today",
"Warns explicitly that cutting a fixed line can produce a penalty larger than the saving",
"Notes that once a lock date passes, the corresponding cut rung is gone",
"No new revenue line is invented to balance the model"
]
},
{
"id": 4,
"prompt": "Compiler Days looks great on paper: projected 82k in revenue against 68k in costs. But I want a second opinion on the mechanics. The venue deposit of 40% is due March 15, the AV deposit April 1, insurance March 20. Our sponsor invoices go out when contracts sign in February, on net-60 terms, so we expect that money mid-May at the earliest. Tickets go on sale May 1. One vendor emailed offering us the option to pay their full balance now, no discount, 'to get it off your plate'. Are we fine?",
"expected_output": "A dated cash-flow schedule showing the March-April outflows landing before any inflow, the lowest cash point identified in that gap, a warning that a profitable budget can still fail on cash, a refusal of the no-discount early payment as pure reversibility loss, and a latest-safe-date commitment posture with checkpoints.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"States that the projected surplus does not answer the question - a budget can be profitable and still fail on cash",
"Builds a dated schedule with each outflow on the date it leaves and each inflow on the date it lands",
"Identifies the lowest cash point and places it in the window before sponsor money arrives mid-May",
"Names the gap explicitly: deposits leave in March and April before any sponsor payment lands",
"Ticket revenue is flagged as the latest-arriving line and the one that can miss",
"The sponsor net-60 terms are treated as setting the inflow date the whole model rests on",
"The vendor's pay-now offer is declined: with no early-payment discount on the other side, paying early spends recoverability and buys nothing",
"Paying early is not framed as prudent or as getting ahead",
"Recommends the latest-safe-date posture: identify, per commitment, the last date it can be made without losing the thing, and hold until then",
"Raises fund-access timing: how long money takes to become spendable once it lands in the account",
"Checkpoint dates for tracking revenue against the plan are produced",
"Recommends re-reading the lowest cash point whenever a payment term changes, not only when a price changes",
"The cost of the early payment is expressed as reversibility given up, not as a money amount"
]
},
{
"id": 5,
"prompt": "HackHarbor is our university's free 36-hour hackathon, 600 registrations so far. I need to work out how much to raise. My co-organizer says the fastest fix for our funding gap is a $10 entry fee - 'that's 6k right there'. Meanwhile I was going to order food for 600 for all five meal slots (Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner, midnight snack, Sunday breakfast, Sunday lunch), plus shirts for 600. We have about 40 mentors, volunteers and organizers on top of the participants. What should the budget look like?",
"expected_output": "A free-by-construction model whose break-even is a fundraising target, rejecting the entry fee as a funding-model reversal, built on a food-dominant hackathon taxonomy with meal quantities tapered per slot instead of flat at 600, staff allocations added on top, overlooked tooling costs surfaced, and a flat scaled contingency floor presented as one organization's practice.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"The first line names the model as free-by-construction, with break-even collapsing to a fundraising target rather than an attendee count",
"The $10 entry fee is rejected as a funding-model reversal dressed as a budget adjustment, not adopted",
"Ticket-line revenue postures are not ranked or offered for this event; sponsorship-by-construction is the named posture",
"Total spend per head is identified as the main controllable lever",
"A hackathon cost taxonomy is used with food as the dominant line, not a conference taxonomy",
"Meal quantities are tapered per meal slot against a claim-rate curve rather than ordered flat at 600 for every slot",
"Sunday breakfast is treated as the lowest-claim meal, on the order of a third of registrations rather than nearly all",
"The roughly 40 mentor, volunteer and organizer meals are added on top of the attendee claim percentages, not assumed inside them",
"Web hosting and internal tooling is surfaced as a commonly overlooked cost line, with student events able to source much of it free through education programs",
"Shirt and swag quantities are driven by expected turnout rather than the 600 registration count",
"The contingency includes a flat floor amount scaled to event size, presented as one organization's recommendation rather than an industry convention",
"Each scope tier is expressed as a fundraising target",
"A prizes line appears in the taxonomy, with a steer toward learning-value prizes over pure cash or its sizing routed to the prize-structuring decision",
"The communication platform line is budgeted at zero or upgrade-only, reflecting a free base tier"
]
},
{
"id": 6,
"prompt": "Quayside DevCon's board is split on our sponsorship target. Director A read that a well-known open-source conference is 90% sponsor-funded and says we should match that. Director B found a standards body's published financial statement where cash sponsorship was only about 3% of revenue, and concludes tickets should carry us. Director C says the biggest community conference in our field generates about two-thirds of its parent foundation's total revenue, 'so 65% sponsor share is the norm'. We're a 350-person community conference and our tickets are mostly bought by attendees' employers as training. Settle this.",
"expected_output": "An explanation that the published splits disagree because of structural choices and bound a range of postures rather than a norm - free-by-default attendance behind the 90%, in-kind contribution outside the 3% cash ratio, and a parent-organization dependency ratio misread as a revenue mix - followed by the posture menu with sponsor-led as default, the employer-training-budget condition engaged for registration-led, and the share set as a team-owned target handed onward.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"States that published revenue splits disagree almost completely and bound the range of real postures, never a norm to hit",
"The 90% figure is explained as a consequence of free-by-default attendance, not a target that event set",
"The 3% cash figure is explained as understating sponsorship where a large in-kind contribution (space, network) sits outside the cash ratio",
"Director C's two-thirds figure is identified as an event-to-parent-organization dependency ratio, not a within-event sponsor-to-ticket split",
"No director's number is adopted as the target",
"The three revenue postures are presented: sponsor-led, registration-led, sponsorship-by-construction",
"Sponsor-led is named the default for a community conference, with sponsorship carrying the bulk and registrations covering per-attendee cost",
"The registration-led promotion condition is engaged against the prompt's detail: the audience attends on employer training budgets, so registration-led is promoted or seriously weighed rather than dismissed",
"Names what the default ordering starves - registration-led - and that following the default indefinitely makes the sponsor pool the event's ceiling",
"The chosen share is framed as a lever the team sets, with the sponsorship target handed onward for tier-splitting rather than split here",
"Registration-led is characterized as topping effort with its money landing latest",
"Sponsor-led is credited with decoupling the decision to run from the ticket curve, which makes the downgrade ladder workable",
"The three cited figures are not averaged into a blended market number"
]
},
{
"id": 7,
"prompt": "PortScan Summit runs under a fiscal sponsor - one of those open-source collective funding platforms. Our budget assumes their fee of 5% on card payments and 8% on bank transfers, which is what we remember signing up under. We sell tickets, and we have sponsors in Germany, Japan and the US; one sponsor wants a bundled package - sponsorship plus an expo booth as one line item at one price. Also: do we need to charge VAT on the tickets? And on the sponsorships? I'd rather set this up right than get audited.",
"expected_output": "A model that flags the 5%/8% fee assumption as a superseded legacy structure to re-verify against current terms, situates the deduction in the typical 7-14% fiscal-sponsor range, takes host share and processing fees off the top on both rails, refuses to state any VAT rule while explaining tickets and sponsorship follow different jurisdiction-specific bases, recommends itemizing the bundled package, and writes the tax question with an owner and a date.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"The 5%/8% fee assumption is flagged as a legacy structure that has been superseded, with instruction to verify the platform's current terms before budgeting on it",
"The response notes the fee model behind those numbers changed recently (subscription-style model and/or an associated fiscal sponsor winding down), or at minimum that it cannot be assumed current",
"The deduction is situated against the typical published fiscal-sponsor range of roughly 7-14%",
"Host share and payment processing fees are deducted off the top, on both the ticket rail and the sponsor rail, before any cost line is funded",
"No VAT rate, threshold, form name or registration rule is stated as though general",
"States that ticket revenue and sponsorship revenue follow different, jurisdiction-specific tax bases",
"Notes that sponsorship can face several tax treatments simultaneously when sponsors sit in different countries",
"The tax question is written as a named open question with an owner and a date, routed to the fiscal host, a local accountant, or counsel",
"Tax handling is carried as a named budget line",
"The bundled sponsorship-plus-booth package is flagged: a bundle takes the treatment of its dominant element, so itemizing sponsorship and booth space separately is recommended",
"Notes that any non-zero ticket price pulls in accounting and tax handling that a free event does not carry",
"No specific named fiscal host, accounting platform or ticketing platform is recommended",
"Fund-release timing from the fiscal sponsor is raised: how fast money can actually be spent once it lands",
"No invented tax answer for Germany, Japan or the US appears anywhere in the response"
]
},
{
"id": 8,
"prompt": "Ferrite Forum planning, two things. First, I'm drafting our sponsor invoicing plan and used the standard structure - small deposit on signing, balance due 30 days before the event - since that's what everyone does. Should late payers owe us interest automatically? Second, the conference hotel offered us a courtesy room block: 60 rooms across three nights including the night after the closing day, no charge to hold it, and I'm inclined to lock all 60 now so attendees get the group rate. Anything wrong with this picture?",
"expected_output": "A correction on both fronts: the small-deposit structure is a fallback pattern while real published sponsor terms skew 50-100% upfront; interest is owed only under an express clause whose drafting belongs to the agreement work; and the room block should start small, scoped to the nights genuinely needed with the post-event night dropped, grown as it fills, because a courtesy block can carry a usage guarantee owed on the commitment.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"The small-deposit-then-balance-at-30-days structure is flagged as a generic fallback pattern, not a verified market standard",
"States that real published sponsor payment terms skew heavily upfront, with 50-100% due at signing or application",
"Recommends invoicing terms that land sponsor cash earlier, tied to the dates the cash-flow model needs money in the account",
"States there is no automatic right to late-payment interest without an express contract clause",
"Drafting the interest clause is routed to the sponsor agreement work rather than done here",
"Any interest figure cited is presented as observed contract terms in the low-to-mid teens percent per annum, not as an entitlement or standard",
"A sponsor signing and then paying late is framed as moving the inflow date the cash-flow model rests on",
"Locking all 60 rooms now is rejected: the block should start very small, on the order of five rooms, and grow as it fills",
"The block is scoped to the nights genuinely needed, explicitly dropping the night after the closing day",
"Warns that a courtesy block can carry a usage guarantee, around 80% of blocked room-nights, owed on the commitment regardless of turnout",
"The group-rate code expiry, roughly a month before the event, is carried as a date in the plan",
"The asymmetry is stated: adding rooms later is cheap and usually allowed, while unwinding a committed block is expensive or impossible"
]
},
{
"id": 9,
"prompt": "Solder & Substrate Conf, edition two. Three things from our planning meeting. 1) Comps: a director wants us to reserve 5% of capacity as scholarship tickets 'because that's what the big conferences allocate'. 2) Reporting: our treasurer plans to report budget performance to the board as one number - 'we landed 2% under budget overall' worked fine last year. 3) Risk: two anchor sponsors provided 70% of our sponsorship last edition and both are 'probably renewing'. We still have last year's three costed budget versions, the per-line actuals, and the cash-flow projection on file. Set up edition two's money model approach.",
"expected_output": "An edition-two setup that counts comps from agreements actually held instead of a capacity ratio, reports variance per line instead of one netted total, compares projected against actual cash troughs to separate inflow-date optimism from cost error, models the two-sponsor concentration through the tier ladder without booking probable renewals, reuses last edition's tiers with their calibration basis, and re-labels every carried line as quote or placeholder.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"The 5%-of-capacity comp rule is rejected; comps are counted from agreements actually held - signed sponsor allotments, confirmed speakers, organizers, volunteers",
"Any large-conference aid figure is treated as an order-of-magnitude sanity check (a low single-digit share of capacity), never an allocation rule",
"Single-total variance reporting is rejected: variance is reported per line, because one total nets underestimates against overestimates and teaches nothing",
"The lowest projected cash point is compared against the lowest actual cash point from last edition",
"The diagnosis is split correctly: an actual trough far below projection means the inflow dates were optimistic, a different fix from the costs being wrong",
"The 70%-from-two-sponsors concentration is treated as a budget risk, with the model stating what happens if the largest two do not renew",
"The scope-tier ladder is named as the mechanism that answers the non-renewal question, which a single budget cannot",
"'Probably renewing' is not booked as committed revenue",
"Last edition's costed tiers are reused, making the ladder near-free this edition",
"Per-head consumable lines rewritten from actual usage carry their calibration basis: the headcount and staff/volunteer/speaker composition they were priced against",
"Contingency drawn against contingency held is read across editions as a calibration signal",
"Which tier the event actually ran at versus which was planned is tracked as an observable",
"Every line carried into edition two still requires a current dated quote or an explicit 'no quote yet' label; last year's prices are not silently treated as this year's quotes"
]
}
],
"trigger_queries": [
{ "query": "Build the budget for our 300-person developer conference in Lisbon next spring.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We're running a hackathon that's free to attend - how do I figure out how much we need to raise from sponsors?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What's our break-even attendee count if sponsorship covers most of the fixed costs?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How big should the contingency reserve be for a first-year tech conference?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Sponsorship is 30% below target with ten weeks to go. What do we cut first?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "The venue wants a 40% deposit in February but our sponsor invoices won't be paid until May. Are we going to run out of cash?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Put together a P&L for the second edition of our Kubernetes community conference.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Which of our conference costs scale with headcount and which are fixed?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Model our conference finances across a cheap version, a normal version, and a stretch version.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I plan when money actually leaves and arrives for my conference?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our fiscal host takes a cut of everything - how do I account for that in the event budget?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "I have a venue quote and nothing else. Turn it into a full conference budget.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Catering, badges, swag - how many of each should we budget for if 800 people registered?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What happens to our event finances if our two biggest sponsors don't renew?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Draft the money model for a two-day community conference funded mostly by sponsors.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We collected 45k in sponsor commitments - is that enough to run the event, and what scope can we afford?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Help me work out the fundraising target for our student hackathon.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How much cushion should we hold on top of the event budget?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "The AV company offered to invoice us now, months early - should we just pay it?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Is our conference financially viable at 250 paid attendees?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Lay out the cash-flow schedule for our conference so we know the worst month.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How should I split the conference budget between fixed commitments and per-attendee spend?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "The board wants three budget scenarios for the summit before approving anything.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We need to know by what date sponsor money must land or we can't pay the venue.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our devcon looks profitable on paper but I'm nervous about the deposit dates. Sanity-check the money.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What does it cost per attendee to run our event, all-in?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Budget planning for a 400-person DevOps conference, mostly sponsor funded.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "If ticket sales come in slow, what's our financial fallback plan for the conference?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do non-refundable deposits fit into the event's financial plan?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Deposits leave in March, sponsor payments land in June - how do I bridge the gap without a loan?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What share of our conference funding should come from sponsors versus registrations?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We overspent last year's conference - build this year's budget so that doesn't happen.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I turn last edition's actuals into next edition's event budget?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Estimate what our 48-hour hackathon will cost for 500 participants.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Should we order food for everyone who registered for the conference?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Someone said hold 10% back for surprises - is that right for a conference budget?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do I budget for a free community event with no ticket revenue?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our treasurer wants a proper financial plan for the conference, not just a spreadsheet of guesses.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Work out what we can afford to spend on the evening party without endangering the core event.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "The venue contract has a food-and-beverage minimum - how does that change our budget risk?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Plan the finances for a 150-person unconference.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What do we do financially if we only hit 70% of the sponsorship target?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "I need an event budget I can defend to our fiscal sponsor's board.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How much of our event spend is recoverable if we have to cancel two months before the date?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Give me the full cost breakdown for running a regional Python conference.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What financial setup do we need in place before announcing the conference date?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Balance our conference budget: 60k in expected expenses, sponsors have pledged 35k so far.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Growth team decided we're doubling capacity next year - redo the conference numbers at the new scale.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How do processing fees and the fiscal host's percentage affect what we can actually spend on the event?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Track our conference spending against the plan through the ticket sale window.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "When can we safely commit to the catering guarantee for our summit?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Our hackathon budget: what line items am I forgetting?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Figure out whether the conference budget can absorb a second day of catering.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "Convert these vendor quotes into a working event budget with scenarios.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What financial checkpoints should we set between now and doors open?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "How exposed are we if attendance comes in 20% under the catering guarantee?", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "We committed to quantities before we knew how many people would really show up and it burned us last year - help me plan this edition's numbers better.", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "What should we charge for early-bird tickets at our conference?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How much should the Gold sponsorship tier cost?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Design our sponsorship tier ladder with price anchoring.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write the sponsorship prospectus for our conference.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Draft the payment and late-fee clauses for our sponsor contract.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Find us a venue for 400 people and negotiate the rental terms.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Get three catering quotes for our conference.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build the month-by-month work-back plan from today to doors open.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Set up the risk register for our conference.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "What overbooking ratio should we use for free registrations?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Run the retrospective on last month's conference, including what went over budget.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Should our conference add a second track next year or move to a bigger venue?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Should we run a hackathon alongside our conference or keep them as separate properties?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How do we launch the first edition of a conference from zero?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Should our event be a single-day or multi-day conference?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Is there enough demand for a Rust conference in our city to sell it out?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How big should the hackathon prize pool be and how should it split across places?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Should we incorporate as a non-profit or use fiscal sponsorship for our meetup group?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Who at our company should own the developer conference budget line, marketing or DevRel?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Pick which sponsors to approach and write the outreach emails.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Deliver the booth and logo placements our Platinum sponsor was promised.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "What perks should each sponsor tier include?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Plan the food and drink service style for our 300-person conference.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How many volunteers do we need and on what shifts?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write the call for papers for our conference.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Set the ticket refund policy for attendees who can't make it.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build the marketing plan to sell out our conference.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "When should tickets go on sale and at what price steps?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Forecast our ticket sales pace and tell me if we're on track against the curve.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Pick the best date for our conference next year.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Plan my startup's annual marketing budget.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Help me budget my department's cloud spend for next year.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build a personal budgeting spreadsheet for me.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Create a film production budget for a short documentary.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Budget for my wedding - 120 guests, outdoor venue.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How should I pace my ad budget across the quarter?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Draw up a construction project budget with a contingency allowance.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "What's a sensible burn rate and runway model for my startup?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Estimate COGS and gross margin for our SaaS pricing tiers.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Set up cost alerts and budgets in our AWS account.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How do I run zero-based budgeting for my team's opex?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Model break-even for our new product line.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Plan the agenda and activities for our 40-person company offsite.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Negotiate better payment terms with our venue.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "What AV setup do we need for recording the talks?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Reconcile the conference bank statements from last quarter.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Write the code of conduct for our event.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How do we get a big cloud vendor to sponsor our conference?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Design the judging rubric for our hackathon.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "What swag should we produce for attendees this year?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Plan a travel reimbursement policy for our open-source maintainer program.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Set the speaker honorarium and travel coverage policy for invited keynotes.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Help me apply for a community grant to fund our meetup series.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "What ROI report should we send sponsors after the event?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Build a dashboard to track event registrations and no-shows.", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "How much should exhibitors pay per square meter of booth space?", "should_trigger": false },
{ "query": "Estimate the token budget for our LLM evaluation pipeline.", "should_trigger": false }
]
}
references/budget-failure-case-studies.md›
# Budget failure case studies, read for their financial mechanism
Contents: how to use this set · five published cases · one anonymized case · what each one changes in the model · what this set does not prove.
## How to use this set
Each case below is read for the **financial mechanism** that ended or nearly ended the event, not for its headline cause. Two of them are usually told as demand stories and one as a burnout story; those tellings are accurate and are not the reason they are here. Cite the mechanism, and say which part of the cause it was.
None of these is a controlled comparison. They are five ways a budget has actually failed, useful for pressure-testing a model against known shapes of failure - not evidence about how often any of them happens.
## Comdex - cancelled 2004
Three large hardware vendors stopped leasing exhibit space, cutting off the organizer's revenue base. That forced the then-owner into bankruptcy, after a broader sector downturn had already reduced attendance and exhibitor counts.
**Mechanism: sponsor and exhibitor revenue withdrawal cascading into organizer insolvency** - not an attendance decline on its own. The revenue concentration is the point: a small number of large exhibitors were load-bearing, and their simultaneous exit was not absorbable.
**What it changes in the model:** revenue concentration is a budget risk, not only a sales risk. If the sponsorship target depends on a handful of names, the model should say what happens when the largest two do not renew - which is a question the tier ladder answers and a single budget does not.
## XOXO Festival - cancelled 2020
The small independent team knew that once money had been taken from sponsors and attendees, they could not financially recover if forced to cancel closer to the date. They cancelled early rather than carry that exposure.
**Mechanism: cash-flow risk from non-refundable pre-commitments, acted on pre-emptively.** This is a decision, not a realized deficit - no money was lost, which is exactly what makes it instructive.
**What it changes in the model:** the timing of irreversibility matters more than the size of the eventual deficit. This is the clearest illustration of why the outflow menu's compliance-cost axis is expressed as reversibility rather than as an amount.
## Vancouver Folk Music Festival - 2023
The organizing society stated that producing the 2023 event would require an extra 500,000 USD, which it judged "not realistic or sustainable" given cash flow. The cited driver was vendors now requiring up-front payment that the festival's cash-flow structure could not absorb.
**Mechanism: cost inflation arriving as a change in vendor payment terms, outrunning the organization's cash-flow model.** The total cost rose, but what actually broke was _when_ the money had to be available.
**What it changes in the model:** a supplier moving from net terms to payment up front changes nothing on the profit-and-loss line and everything at the lowest cash point. Re-read the trough whenever a payment term changes, not only when a price changes. (Not a technical conference - kept because the mechanism is format-independent and unusually clearly stated.)
## Strange Loop - final edition 2023
The stated reason for ending was organizer exhaustion rather than any lack of success, compounded by the financial risk of venues requiring bookings three years in advance.
**Mechanism: multi-year venue-booking financial exposure**, layered on top of burnout rather than replacing it. Cite the mechanism and name the compound cause honestly; presenting this as a pure budget failure misdescribes it.
**What it changes in the model:** the booking lead time for a large venue (9-18 months generally, and longer at the top end as here) means one edition's model routinely commits money on behalf of editions nobody has decided to run yet. Name that commitment as an obligation of the current edition, since that is where it will be paid from.
## OSCON - discontinued 2020
The publisher's president stated the company could not plan for or execute a business permanently changed by an unpredictable pandemic timeline.
**Mechanism: demand collapse resolved as a corporate portfolio decision**, not a single event's budget failure. Included as the honest counter-example: not every ended event ended for a budget reason, and a budget model should not claim credit for surviving a decision made at portfolio level.
## Anonymized case - scope cut, sponsors out
Event, organizer, place and figures withheld; read it as one reported shape, not a published case.
A large multi-day community event signed a big venue before ticket sales were known. Months before the date, sales sat well behind plan, so the organizers cut the budget drastically. Sponsors then withdrew, because the event they had bought into no longer reached the audience they had priced. Only digital visibility kept selling.
**Mechanism: a scope cut that also cut revenue.** The downgrade was modelled as a cost saving only, while sponsorship moved with reach, so the saving and the lost sponsorship partly cancelled.
**What it changes in the model:** price every downgrade rung net of the sponsor revenue it forfeits, and keep a staff-free digital visibility surface that survives a downgrade. It is also a second instance of the over-built venue shape below: the commitment was made before demand was proven.
## The over-built venue, as the recurring shape
Across these venue cases, the single largest financial risk named directly is over-building capacity relative to proven demand and then carrying deposit and attrition exposure on it. One organizer described the 1,500-capacity space he had committed to as "an amazing (but very expensive) venue" while the edition was still running.
That is the shape most of these cases share: the money was committed against a headcount that had not yet been proven, on a date chosen by the counterparty rather than the organizer.
## What this set does not prove
- It says nothing about **frequency**. Five published cases and one reported one are the ones that were written up or told, and events that quietly absorbed a shortfall published nothing.
- It contains **no counterfactual**. No case here shows an event that held a larger contingency and survived a comparable shock, so it cannot be used to argue for any particular reserve size.
- It is **not the only reading** of these events. Comdex and XOXO are just as correctly told as demand failures; the financial mechanism is one layer of the cause, never the whole of it.
references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md›
# Cash flow, fiscal hosting, and the tax question
## Table of Contents
- [Outflows: when money leaves, and what leaving costs](#outflows-when-money-leaves-and-what-leaving-costs)
- [Inflows: when money arrives](#inflows-when-money-arrives)
- [What comes off the top](#what-comes-off-the-top)
- [Fund-access timing](#fund-access-timing)
- [The tax question, as contrast rather than rule](#the-tax-question-as-contrast-rather-than-rule)
Everything here is about **when money moves and what it costs to move it**, not what anything should cost. Each figure carries its source and date. The tax section deliberately states no rule.
## Outflows: when money leaves, and what leaving costs
### Venue and supplier deposits
Generic event-planning industry-guide mechanics, not figures measured on any particular event: deposits typically run **25-50% at signing**, with the balance due **14-30 days out**. Large conferences (300+ attendees) are typically booked **9-18 months ahead**, which sets the practical floor on how far in advance a capacity decision has to be made.
Post-2020, venues are frequently unwilling to renegotiate committed minimums (industry commentary, 2023). That is a structural tightening relative to every pre-2020 case study: a budget model that assumes a minimum can be talked down later is modelling a market that no longer exists.
### Attrition thresholds and food-and-beverage minimums
These are the core financial exposure of a venue contract: the organizer can owe the shortfall even when actual attendance comes in below the block or minimum committed to. The exposure is owed on the **commitment**, not on the turnout, which is precisely why cutting a fixed structural line late can cost more than keeping it.
One concrete instance from a community-conference organizing guide: a hotel offering a courtesy room block to an event that is _not_ also buying its meeting rooms and catering may require a guarantee that **at least 80% or so of the blocked room-nights are used**. The same guide's own mitigation is the staged posture in miniature:
- Start with a very small block, as few as 5 rooms.
- Scope it only to the nights genuinely needed - the night before day one and the night between days, explicitly not the night after the final day.
- Grow it as it fills, since hotels will generally allow additions.
The group rate code typically expires roughly a month before the event, which is a date the plan has to carry.
### The commitment-timing rule, in the source's own words
Same guide: "Don't overcommit on the number of people coming and don't do a pre-payment for the venue until you must. The same goes for food: it's always easier to add a few extra plates as opposed to having too much food ordered."
The asymmetry is the whole argument. Under-committing early and scaling up late is cheap and fast; over-committing early and scaling down late is expensive or impossible. Mark each commitment with its **latest safe date**, not the earliest possible one.
## Inflows: when money arrives
### Sponsorship payment schedules
Real published terms from event sponsorship agreements. Each is one organization's terms, not a market standard:
- One professional association (2021 conference): minimum **50% deposit due with the application**, due immediately on invoice receipt, with full payment by a fixed date; applications after that date require 100% upfront.
- One awards program: **80% on sign-up, 20% three months before the event** - collapsing to 100% in one installment if signing falls within three months of the event.
- One defence-industry conference (2026 contract): **100% deposit at signing**, no installment at all.
- One compliance association: balance in full on application submission and within 15 days of invoice receipt.
- One large language-community conference (2020): **full payment must accompany the form** to secure the space - 100% upfront with no installment path.
**Pattern:** real terms skew heavily toward large upfront commitments (50-100% at signing or application) rather than even installments. Generic vendor-agnostic guidance describing "deposit on signing, balance 30 days before the event" is a fallback pattern, not a verified figure - do not cite it as one.
Late-payment interest, where it is expressly stated in these contracts, runs **12-18% per annum**. Without an express clause there is no contractual right to interest at all. Drafting the clause belongs to `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-sponsor-agreement`, not to budgeting; it matters here for one reason only: a sponsor who signs and pays late moves the inflow date the whole cash-flow model rests on.
### Ticket revenue
Ticket money arrives across the sale window rather than on one date. It spikes at named moments:
- Announcement.
- An early price ending.
- Speakers announced.
- The agenda published.
- Comp codes going out.
- After any reminder.
- In the final fortnight.
The shape of that curve, and what a shortfall against it means, belong to `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-market-fit` and `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-ticket-pricing`. What the budget needs from it is only this: **it is the latest-arriving revenue line, and it is the one that can miss.** That is the entire case for the sponsor-led posture and the downgrade ladder.
## What comes off the top
### Fiscal-host and fiscal-sponsorship fees
These are facts about a market, not recommendations - no host is being recommended.
| Host type | Fee | Date and status |
| ---------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| One open-source funding platform, legacy model | 5% on card payments, 8% on manual bank transfers and checks | ⚠️ **superseded** - see the row below |
| The same platform, current model | subscription-based; hosts still charging a host fee pay the platform a 15% share of that host-fee revenue | **changed March 2026** - verify current terms before citing |
| Its associated 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor | - | **dissolved 31 December 2024**, displacing 600+ collectives; the platform continues under a separate 501(c)(6) |
| One software-freedom non-profit | 10% of most member-project revenue and donations; higher negotiated for event-heavy projects | |
| One lighter-touch public-interest non-profit | 5% of gross revenue, with fewer services in exchange | |
| One student-focused fiscal sponsor | flat 7% on all incoming funds, with no card, monthly, processing, legal, startup, transaction, card-issuing or subscription fees on top | |
⚠️ **The 5%/8% row is legacy and must never be stated as current.** That platform's fee model changed in March 2026 and its associated 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor dissolved at the end of December 2024. The dissolution is worth naming to an organizer currently sponsored there for a reason beyond price: displaced collectives had to migrate hosts, not merely absorb a fee change - a continuity risk, not a budget-line risk.
Published fiscal-sponsor fees typically run **7-14%**. Against that range the flat 7% sits at the low end and 10% mid-range; the legacy 5%/8% split by payment method was cheaper than both, which is exactly why quoting it as current would understate the deduction.
### Payment processing
Charged on both rails - ticket sales and sponsor payments - on top of any host fee. Running both through one processor account keeps the accounting in one place.
Any non-zero ticket price also pulls in accounting and tax handling that a free event does not carry. One organizer guide notes the cross-border case: an organizer running an event in another country may need a tax identifier there, and the cost of obtaining it can take a significant portion of a small event's money.
## Fund-access timing
From a hackathon organizer guide, as a pre-flight checklist. The budget-critical line is the last one:
- Can the organizing entity accept donations, and by what mechanism?
- Is the event covered by an institution's insurance, or are waivers needed?
- Who has signing authority for sponsor agreements, and how long does that review take? A slow signing process delays sponsor cash actually landing - a cash-flow risk, not only a legal one.
- Where are funds held, how are they accessed, what fees apply, and **what is the realistic timeline for actually being able to spend funds once they arrive in the account?**
That last question gates whether pre-event deposits can be paid on time at all. Ask it before the first deposit date is agreed, not after.
## The tax question, as contrast rather than rule
⚠️ **Nothing in this section is a rule, a rate, or advice.** The two contrasts below exist to show the reader that the question is real and has genuinely different answers in different places, so they route it to the fiscal host, a local accountant, or counsel instead of assuming. Tax treatment changes, and any of this may already be out of date.
**One large bloc:** admission to events, exhibitions and conferences is taxed **where the event physically takes place**, regardless of attendee or organizer domicile. Sponsorship is taxed under a different basis entirely - the payer's jurisdiction, under the general business-to-business rule. So the same event can face one treatment on tickets and several simultaneously on sponsorship, if its sponsors sit in different countries.
A bundled sponsorship-plus-booth package takes the treatment of whichever element an authority judges to _dominate_ the bundle - a practical argument for itemizing sponsorship and space separately rather than selling one blended line. A change effective 1 January 2025 moved virtual and livestreamed events to a consumer-location basis.
**One federal system without a national sales tax:** admissions taxation is set state by state, and non-profit status does **not** by itself settle it:
- One state exempts admission charges only where the organization qualifies under a specific charitable classification.
- Another has taxed admissions from non-profit-produced events since 2014, regardless of status, unless a specific short-duration or fundraiser exemption applies.
Separately, sponsorship and advertising revenue for a charitable organization there is generally an unrelated-business-income question rather than a sales-tax one - a different mechanism entirely, and conflating the two produces confidently wrong advice.
**What to do with this in a budget:** carry a named line for tax handling and a named open question - "who confirms the treatment of ticket revenue and of sponsorship revenue in this jurisdiction, and by when" - with an owner and a date. Record the answer when it comes back. Never state the answer yourself.
references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md›
# Cost taxonomies and sourced budget benchmarks
## Table of Contents
- [How to read this file](#how-to-read-this-file)
- [Conference cost taxonomy](#conference-cost-taxonomy)
- [Hackathon cost taxonomy](#hackathon-cost-taxonomy)
- [The fixed-versus-per-head cut](#the-fixed-versus-per-head-cut)
- [Published itemized P&Ls](#published-itemized-pls)
- [Revenue-split actuals, side by side](#revenue-split-actuals-side-by-side)
- [Comp and scholarship allocation as a share of capacity](#comp-and-scholarship-allocation-as-a-share-of-capacity)
## How to read this file
Every figure below carries its organization, its year, and **the quantity it measures**. Those three things travel together; a number lifted without them goes wrong quietly. Two figures in this file measure something narrower than they appear to, and both are flagged where they sit.
Carry ratios across, not amounts. A per-person food cost from one country in one year is not a price for another; the useful content is its share of that event's total and its relation to the other lines. Amounts appear here - this is a budget skill and its sources are budgets - but they belong in this file, not in a recommendation.
## Conference cost taxonomy
Source: a community-conference organizing guide, public repository. Named income and expense categories, not a worked budget.
**Income:** sponsors, registrations. The guide frames sponsorship as potentially up to three-quarters of income depending on the tiers set, and states an operative target of 80%+ of budget from sponsorship once its scope-tier mechanic is in play.
Registrations are framed as filling the remainder - "price your registrations to cover the per-attendee costs" - not as the primary engine. This is organizing-guide guidance, **not an audited actual**.
**Expenses:**
- Venue.
- Internet (attendee access provisioning).
- Media (livestream, recording, captioning).
- Catering (breakfast, breaks, lunches; some venues mandate their own).
- Evening event.
- Merchandise.
- Badges and lanyards.
- Signage.
- Speaker expenses (speakers' dinner, small appreciation gifts).
- Administrative costs (insurance, taxes, accounting services).
- A per-edition contribution to the parent community, introduced 1 January 2025, sized at the equivalent of at least one full-price attendee ticket, payable any time between tickets going on sale and the first day. A free event owes nothing under that rule, since the amount is the ticket price multiplied by zero.
**Spend-approval process, from the same guide:** all major expenditures go to the organizing team for approval, to prevent conflict of interest and provide oversight. The common pattern is an organizer paying directly and claiming reimbursement, with sign-off required from at least one other organizer - never self-approved. The guide draws an appropriateness line inside overhead spend, and gives **no fixed threshold** - the test is local team judgement against regional norms:
- Reasonable: travel to run or learn from an event, local transport, team clothing, meeting food at typical regional prices.
- Not reasonable: organizer-only gifts, above-market meeting food, travel beyond participation needs.
**Money handling, from the same guide:** an event cannot announce a date until it has a working way to process money - "realizing too late that you cannot process money has led to rescheduled or canceled events." The typical solution is a local company handling invoicing and payment logistics, sometimes compensated with a sponsorship in return, and required outright in some countries for tax reasons. Run ticketing and sponsor payment links through the same processor account so invoicing flows through one place.
## Hackathon cost taxonomy
Source: a major hackathon-league organizer guide, public repository. A different shape from the conference taxonomy - food-dominant - and the two must not be blended.
**Categories, in the guide's own order of emphasis:**
- Food - named as one of the most significant costs and a primary driver of participant experience.
- Communication platform - free at base tier; budget only for an upgrade.
- Swag - shirts, stickers, bottles, lanyards.
- Prizes - the guide steers toward prizes with learning value over pure cash.
- Web hosting and internal tooling - flagged as the cost most often overlooked; student-run events can source much of it free through education programs.
**Per-person unit benchmarks (that guide's own figures, US hackathons):**
- Food: $8-10 per person per meal.
- Snacks and drinks: $10 per person.
- T-shirts: $5-8 per person, volume-dependent.
- Buses: $3,500 per bus, where transport is provided.
These are the source's absolute figures in its own market and year - carry the _relations_ across (food per meal against shirt cost against a bus) rather than the amounts.
**Meal claim-rate curve** (same guide, sourced from one university team's QR-code check-in data, generalized ±10%):
- Day 1 lunch: ≈90% of total registrations.
- Day 1 dinner: ≈80%.
- Midnight snack: ≈70%.
- Day 2 breakfast: ≈30%.
- Day 2 lunch: ≈60%.
Sponsor, volunteer, mentor and organizer allocations are ordered on top of these percentages, not inside them. The practical read: taper meal quantity per meal instead of ordering flat at headcount - the same add-late-rather-than-over-commit asymmetry the outflow menu ranks, applied at meal granularity.
**Contingency buffer** (same guide): a flat **$1,000-$3,000**, scaled to event size - "organizers will always need this extra money". The source gives **no percentage-of-budget framing**; it is a floor amount, not a share, and it is one organization's recommendation rather than an industry convention.
## The fixed-versus-per-head cut
This cut is **a convention carried over from general financial modelling, not measured against event data**: a fixed/variable split cross-cutting functional cost categories, applied to an event budget. The two taxonomies above group lines by function, not by whether a line moves with headcount.
Applied to them, the assignment of each named line below is **this skill's own construction**:
- **Fixed** - venue rental, signage, media production setup, insurance, accounting. None of them moves with the twentieth extra attendee.
- **Per-head** - catering quantity, badges and lanyards, swag, meal counts. All are driven by the expected-show-up number.
- **Per-speaker** - speaker expenses. A third driver, neither of the first two, and named as its own. Split it in two: the speakers' dinner and gifts named in the conference taxonomy above, and travel and hotel reimbursement, which that taxonomy does not name. Reimbursing speakers' travel and hotel is normal at community events, while speaker fees are not the norm. The reimbursement line scales with how far each speaker travels, so carry it per confirmed speaker, never as a flat share.
The same financial-modelling material names the cash-timing mismatch directly: revenue is not cash, because of payment terms, and expenses are paid before revenue is collected. That naming is the part that carries over. The recurring-revenue mechanics around it (retention, lifetime value, payback period) do not transfer to a single bounded edition and are not used here.
Its expense-buffer heuristic - "add 20% buffer to expense estimates" - is format-agnostic and usable, but it too is **a convention carried over from startup financial modelling, not measured against event data**. It is not an event-industry convention and must never be presented as one.
## Published itemized P&Ls
Source for this whole section: tech-conference budget benchmarks and fiscal structures. Its own coverage note: open, dollar-figure P&Ls are almost exclusively published by community and non-profit-run events; for-profit conferences do not disclose them.
### DebConf21 (online, 2021) - proposed budget
From a budget-proposal thread on the project's development mailing list. Ledger convention in the original: expenses positive, income negative.
- Registration income: 45,000 USD
- Sponsor income by tier: bronze 3,000; silver 2,000; gold 20,000; platinum 12,000; supporter 8,000 - total ≈45,000 USD
- Expenses: bursaries 13,100 USD; swag, pins, shirts and shipping ≈5,300 USD; video 100 USD
- Projected surplus: 30,000 USD
Quantity note: this is a **proposal**, not an actual. The online format also removes venue and catering entirely, which is why the expense side is unrepresentative of an in-person edition.
### DebConf16 (Cape Town, 2016) - final report actuals
- Total sponsorship raised: 152,850 USD, plus separate merchandise sales
- Registration: 16,000 USD, contributed by 59 attendees paying the professional or corporate fee
- Split: roughly 90% sponsor-funded / 10% registration-funded
Quantity note: this event's attendance is free by default, so the 90/10 split is a consequence of that model, not a target anyone set.
### IETF 79 (Beijing, 2010) - actual-versus-budget financial statement
- Registration revenue: 666,646 USD actual against 677,125 USD budgeted
- Cash sponsorship revenue: 30,000 USD
- In-kind sponsorship (meeting space and network operations): 275,000 USD
- Total revenue 971,646 USD; total expenses 616,441 USD
- Surplus to the parent organization: 355,205 USD, 45,344 USD above budget
Quantity note: registration is ≈69% of **cash** revenue and cash sponsorship ≈3%. The large in-kind component sits outside that cash ratio entirely - the sponsorship contribution to this event is materially larger than 3% in value, and quoting the cash figure alone misdescribes it.
### PSF / PyCon US 2023 - parent-organization financials
- Parent-organization total revenue 4,356,000 USD against 4,508,000 USD expenses (a small loss)
- PyCon US spending: 1,800,000 USD of that total
- Other lines: grants 677,000 USD; infrastructure including the package index 286,000 USD; fiscal sponsorees 204,000 USD
- Historical dependency ratio: the conference generates 63-65% of the parent organization's total revenue (63% in the 2019 report, 65% in the 2020 report)
⚠️ **Quantity note, load-bearing:** that 63-65% is an **event-to-parent-organization dependency ratio**, not a within-event sponsor-to-ticket split. The conference's own standalone P&L is not published anywhere; only its share of the consolidated statement is. Do not cite it as a revenue-mix figure.
## Revenue-split actuals, side by side
| Event, year | Sponsorship share | Registration share | Basis |
| -------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| Community-conference organizing guide (guidance, for contrast) | up to 75%; 80%+ stated as the scope-tier target | remainder, priced to cover per-attendee cost | organizing-guide guidance, **not an audited actual** |
| DebConf16, 2016 | ≈90% (152,850 USD) | ≈10% (16,000 USD, 59 paying registrants) | final report actuals |
| IETF 79, 2010 | ≈3% of cash (30,000 USD), plus 275,000 USD in-kind outside the cash ratio | ≈69% of cash (666,646 USD of 971,646 USD) | audited-style financial statement |
| PyCon US / PSF, 2019-2020 reports | not separable in a single event P&L | - | see the dependency-ratio warning above |
The three actuals disagree almost completely, and a structural choice explains each disagreement. Free-by-default attendance pushes one to ≈90/10; heavy in-kind provision of space and network pushes the other to a cash split that understates what sponsors actually contributed. Read the table as the range of postures that exist, never as a norm.
## Comp and scholarship allocation as a share of capacity
### PyCon US 2019
- 143 financial-aid recipients, from the parent organization's 2019 annual report
- Aid spend: 137,200 USD, a 17% increase over 2018
- ≈**4.4% of capacity received financial aid**
⚠️ **Caveat that travels with this figure, every time it is used:** the 4.4% divides 2019's recipient count by **2018's** checked-in attendance (≈3,260) rather than a same-year figure. It is an approximation across two different years, not a same-year ratio. Present it as an order of magnitude - "a low single-digit percentage of capacity" - and never as a precise allocation rule.
### DebConf (structural, not a single year)
No separate scholarship tier exists: attendance is free by default for community members, and only professional (200-650 USD) and corporate (1,000-1,300 USD) registrants pay. Effectively close to 100% of capacity is subsidized, funded by the 5-10% of attendees who pay a fee. This is the same structure behind its ≈90/10 revenue split above.
### What this does and does not close
It anchors the order of magnitude and nothing more. It does **not** produce a comp-allocation rule, and no percentage from one large conference transfers to a per-city community conference or to a private-sector one. Count committed comps from the agreements actually held - signed sponsor allotments, confirmed speakers, organizers, volunteers - and use the anchor above only as a sanity check on the order of magnitude.
SKILL.md›
---
name: event-budget
description: Build the budget and P&L for a technical event - every cost line split into fixed and per-head, the revenue mix against the funding model, a Good/Better/Best scope-tier ladder so break-even has three answers instead of one, a contingency sized as a stacked floor, pad and downgrade ladder whose cuts also price lost sponsor reach, a cross-edition reserve policy, annual funding decoupled from single events, and outflows scheduled against the dates sponsor and ticket money actually lands. Use whenever asked to build an event budget, model conference or hackathon costs, find break-even, size a contingency reserve, set a reserve or surplus policy across editions, fund a recurring meetup series annually, plan event cash flow, or decide what to cut when revenue falls short. Consumes prices and real vendor quotes, never sets them. Do NOT use to set ticket or sponsor prices - use samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-ticket-pricing or samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-sponsor-pricing.
license: MIT
metadata:
author: Samuel Berthe
version: "1.1.0"
---
# Event Budget
You model the money for one edition of a technical event. Produce five things:
- The cost lines, and which of them scale with heads.
- The revenue total, and where it comes from.
- The cushion.
- The dates cash moves.
- The cut order when revenue falls short.
Consume prices - ticket, sponsor, venue, vendor - never derive them. Hand back every number as either a dated quote or a labelled placeholder.
Treat every ranking below as a default, not a law. Re-rank against what the interview turns up: a recurring event with last edition's actuals, an organizer with no accounting capacity, a fiscal host already taking a share off the top, a format with no ticket-revenue line at all, a recurring series funded by annual sponsors and membership. Each overturns a default rung.
**No currency amount appears anywhere in this file.** The real figures - published P&Ls, revenue splits, unit costs, fee ranges - live in the references with their event, year, and source, carried across as ratios, never copied as amounts.
## Ticketed or free-by-construction
The axis that changes the budget work is **whether the format has a ticket-revenue line at all**, never who pays for the attendee. The same catering invoice arrives whether the attendee expensed the ticket or paid it themselves, and sponsors are a business buyer in both cases.
- **Ticketed** - a genuine two-line revenue mix. Sponsorship share is a lever the team sets and can miss. Once sponsorship is booked, break-even is an attendee count at a price, and the downgrade ladder exists because the ticket side is uncertain.
- **Free-by-construction** - typically a hackathon, sometimes a conference. Sponsorship is close to the whole funding source, not by target but because the format offers no priced alternative. Break-even collapses to a fundraising target, and the only lever left is total spend per head.
Name which one the model assumes in the first line of the output. Keep the two cost taxonomies apart too: they differ in shape and must never be blended (see [references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md](references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md)).
## What arrives already decided
Take these as inputs. Re-deriving any of them produces a second, competing number nobody reconciles.
| Sibling | Owns | You do |
| ---------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `event-ticket-pricing` | The ticket price ladder | Hand it the ticket target and the paid capacity after comps; it returns the actual sold total for variance |
| `event-sponsor-pricing` | Tier splits | Own the sponsorship-share target; it splits into tiers |
| `event-venue-sourcing` | Real quotes, terms | Hold the line-item slot, fixed/per-head character, deposit timing |
| `event-vendor-sourcing` | Every other supplier quote | Same split: it quotes, you shape |
| `event-production` | The Media line, pre-split by tier | Take it as handed |
| `event-no-show-management` | The expected-show-up number | Budget from it, never the registration count; the overbooking buffer is the gap |
| `event-team-structure` | Which entity holds the money | Model what it costs and how fast it releases funds |
| `event-risk-management` | The risk case for a reserve, go/no-go placement | **You pick the contingency number** |
| `event-growth-strategy` / `event-portfolio-strategy` | Whether the edition grows, portfolio split | Re-run this model at whatever scale they set |
Hand post-edition variance to `event-debrief`, never re-modelling it, and hand a cost line creeping across editions to `event-continuous-improvement`. Plan and track one edition only. Cross-edition money - the reserve and annual funding - enters this model as two per-edition lines: the reserve contribution out, the annual-funding allocation in.
## Interview
Ask one at a time, multiple-choice where possible. Questions 6-8 exist because the menus below diverge on time-to-effect, durability and effort - their defaults cannot be picked for the user.
1. What is the format, and does it charge for attendance at all?
2. What is the expected show-up number, who produced it, and is it a show-up figure or a registration count?
3. Which cost lines already have a real dated quote? Which are still guesses?
4. Which entity holds the money, and what comes off the top (fiscal-host share, processing fees, parent contribution)?
5. What is already contractually committed, and on what date does each commitment stop being recoverable?
6. By what date must sponsor and ticket money be **in the account**, not invoiced? A hard date promotes postures that book early.
7. One-off edition, one year of a recurring event, or one evening of a recurring series (a monthly meetup)? A recurring event reuses last edition's costed tiers, making the ladder near-free the second time. A recurring series promotes the annual-funding posture.
8. Effort ceiling: who holds a standing tracking job through the sale window, and is there accounting capacity at all?
9. Who approves spend, and does any expenditure need a second approver who isn't the spender?
10. Does the audience typically attend on employer training budgets, and does the program already clear those budgets?
11. Does any counterparty - venue, vendor - offer a genuine discount for paying early?
12. What is the organization's reserve policy across editions: break-even each time, or a surplus held back to survive a failed edition or a shock? Does a reserve exist today, how large against the organization's fixed yearly costs, and what may it fund? (See "Reserve policy" below.)
13. Is there a membership scheme, and is membership tied to event ticket discounts?
## Workflow
1. Run the interview. Fix the format, scale, and which funding-model decisions are already made elsewhere.
2. **List cost lines from the format's own taxonomy** - conference and hackathon differ in shape, never blend them: [references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md](references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md).
3. **Cut every line into fixed, per-head and per-speaker, naming each per-head driver.** Speaker travel and hotel reimbursement is its own per-speaker line, separate from the speakers' dinner and gifts; reimbursing expenses is normal at community events, while speaker fees are not the norm. Budget fees only where the program policy deliberately pays them.
Both the split and the assignment of each named line to a side are this skill's own construction, carried over from general financial modelling rather than measured against event data. Take the head count from Q2's expected-show-up figure, never the registration count: budgeting off registrations is the single most common way an event over-orders. Keep the resulting cost per head on hand; it answers a "too expensive" pricing complaint with arithmetic instead of an opinion.
4. **Fill each line with a real dated quote or an explicit placeholder.** Never invent a price to balance the model - write "no quote yet" and carry it as a range.
5. **Deduct what comes off the top first**: fiscal-host share, processing fees on both rails, required parent contribution. Fee ranges: [references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md](references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md).
6. **Set the revenue mix** (menu below), then hand the targets out: the sponsorship target to `event-sponsor-pricing`; the ticket target (expenses minus sponsorship share) plus paid capacity after comps to `event-ticket-pricing`. Count comps from agreements actually held, never from a ratio.
7. **Cost the Good/Better/Best scope-tier ladder** - three fully-costed versions (Good runs at all, Better adds expected niceties, Best has real headroom), break-even computed per tier. On free-by-construction, each tier is a fundraising target instead. **Re-estimate sponsor revenue per tier, never carry one figure across all three**: sponsors price on reach, so a smaller tier sells less sponsorship. Ask `event-sponsor-pricing` which surfaces survive each downgrade; staff-free digital visibility usually does, booths and on-site activations usually do not.
8. **Size the contingency** using the three-tool stack below, then **set the reserve contribution** from the reserve policy - a separate line, not part of the contingency.
9. **Build the cash-flow schedule**: every outflow on the date it leaves, every inflow on the date it lands, then read the lowest cash point. Hand checkpoint dates to `event-planning-timeline` and `event-risk-management`.
10. **Write the tax and jurisdiction question rather than answering it.** Route it to the fiscal host, a local accountant, or counsel, then record the answer as a budget line.
11. **Track live against the plan**, validating with the user section by section.
If your harness has persistent memory, record:
- The line taxonomy, with each line's fixed/per-head character.
- The quotes, with their dates.
- The three costed tiers.
- The contingency figure, and how it was reached.
- The reserve policy, this edition's contribution or draw, and the reserve balance after it.
- Per tier, the sponsor revenue expected at that tier's reach.
- The cash-flow schedule, with its lowest point.
- After the edition, actual against planned, per line.
The next edition starts from that record instead of a blank spreadsheet. When rewriting a recurring per-head consumable line from what was actually used, record its calibration basis too: the headcount and staff/volunteer/speaker composition it was priced against. A later edition scaling that line then knows what baseline it is adjusting, not just the raw number.
## Revenue-mix posture
Which shape the funding takes. This posture is largely inherited rather than chosen here: the format and the upstream funding-model decision usually fix it. Name which one arrived, and what it implies for the model. Ranking (default, not a law - re-rank against Q1, Q6, Q7, Q13):
- effort (modelling work plus the standing revenue management each posture demands): `registration-led > sponsor-led > annual-funding-led > sponsorship-by-construction`
- value (budget covered without the decision to run hanging on money that arrives late): `annual-funding-led > sponsor-led > sponsorship-by-construction > registration-led`
- efficiency: `annual-funding-led > sponsor-led > registration-led`
Annual-funding-led sits below sponsor-led on effort because one yearly sale per sponsor and one yearly membership cycle replace a sale per edition, amortized across every edition of the series. It tops value because its cash lands about a year ahead of the editions it funds. It dominates sponsor-led on both axes, which is why it exists only for a recurring series - see its deletion rule below.
- **Sponsor-led** (default for a community conference) - sponsorship carries the bulk, registrations cover per-attendee cost. Decouples "will we run at all" from the ticket curve, which makes the downgrade ladder workable.
- **Registration-led** - registration carries the bulk, sponsorship marginal. Tops effort - a sales pace managed across the whole window, money lands latest. **Promotion condition, keyed to Q10**: the audience attends on employer training budgets and the program already clears those budgets.
- **Annual-funding-led** (default for a recurring series, Q7) - annual sponsors and membership dues fund a self-managed yearly budget; each edition draws an allocation from it instead of raising its own revenue. Pricing the annual tier belongs to `event-sponsor-pricing`. **Anti-pattern, keyed to Q13: membership tied to event ticket discounts.** It produces a join spike just before each event, inflates and distorts member numbers, and re-couples the organization's income to single events. Decouple membership and annual sponsorship from any one event so no single edition carries the organization. Cost: concentration on a few annual sponsors (the Comdex shape in [references/budget-failure-case-studies.md](references/budget-failure-case-studies.md)), which the reserve policy below is there to absorb.
- **Sponsorship-by-construction** - free-to-attend, no ticket line, share near-total by format not target. Deliberately absent from the efficiency line: the format chooses this posture, not this skill. Cost is concentration - one revenue source, no second lever.
**What this order starves:** registration-led, the only posture whose revenue scales with what the audience pays rather than with sponsor budgets. Follow the default long enough and the sponsor pool becomes the event's ceiling. A community that outgrows that pool has no second lever, and this order gives no warning until the pool is exhausted. Promote registration-led on the condition above.
**Delete, do not demote: annual-funding-led, on a one-off edition** - from this menu and the axis lines. With no series to spread a yearly sale across, it is sponsor-led under another name, and leaving it parked invites a "yearly sponsor" for an event that has no next year to deliver.
**Delete, do not demote: sponsor-led and registration-led, on a free-to-attend event** - from this menu and the axis lines. Ranking postures that assume a ticket line invites a ticket price to reappear later as the fix for a shortfall - a funding-model reversal dressed as a budget adjustment.
Three published actuals disagree almost completely - see [references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md](references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md) for the range. Read them as postures that exist, never a norm to hit.
## Contingency provision: a stack, not a ranking
**This section deliberately does not rank its options.**
The three tools compose: a real budget runs all three at once. Ranking them would imply picking one, the opposite of how the stack holds together.
Even if they were competing, a ranking would rest on nothing:
- Value and effort run in the _same_ order across all three - floor lowest on both, ladder highest on both.
- Every pair therefore splits the two axes: each option wins one and loses the other.
- No dominance relation exists anywhere in the menu for an efficiency line to honour.
An unfalsifiable ranking is not a passed check.
- **A floor** - an absolute minimum cash reserve held regardless of budget size, covering the small certain surprises that always arrive (figure and source in [references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md](references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md)). Cheapest of the three: one number, decided once.
- **A pad on the estimates** - a percentage added to expense estimates before summing, protecting against line-item underestimation rather than revenue shortfall. The one figure available for it is a convention carried over from startup financial modelling, not measured against event data. Label it that way every time it is quoted.
- **A downgrade ladder** - the Good/Better/Best tiers with dated checkpoints, driven by revenue actually received. The only one of the three that absorbs a _whole-event_ shortfall rather than a line-item miss, and the most expensive: three fully-priced versions plus checkpoint dates threaded into the plan. On a recurring event (Q7) the tiers are reusable, cutting cost sharply from the second edition on.
**Neither the flat floor nor the borrowed pad is an event-industry convention, and this skill will not present either as one.** Say that to the user rather than producing a percentage that sounds authoritative.
### The cut order lives inside the ladder
The cut order _is_ the ladder's content - the tiers are this sequence, pre-priced and pre-decided. Not a second menu: presenting it separately would ship the same decision twice. Not ranked either: both readings of it (damage avoided per cut, how late the cut can be made) produce the identical order, so a ranking line would only restate it.
Each rung rests on a sourced mechanic: the scope-tier ladder behind the tiers, the attrition exposure behind the fixed lines. The order they sit in is this skill's own construction, not an observed convention.
1. **Discretionary extras first** - the evening event, swag upgrades, sponsored add-ons. This is the Best tier's own content, and cutting it protects the core experience entirely.
2. **Per-head variable quantities second** - catering covers, badge and lanyard counts - only where the guarantee hasn't locked yet. Past the lock date this rung is gone, which is why the cut order must be decided against the cash-flow schedule, not in the abstract.
3. **Fixed structural lines last** - the venue tier, the core Media line. These commit earliest and can cost more to cut than to keep. Attrition thresholds and food-and-beverage minimums are owed on what was committed, not on what turned up, so a downgrade can produce a penalty larger than the saving.
**Every cut also moves the revenue side.** Sponsors price on reach, so a downgrade that shrinks attendance, days or tracks shrinks what sponsors will pay - revenue is not independent of scope. Price each rung's cut net of the sponsor revenue it loses: a cut that saves less than the sponsorship it forfeits deepens the shortfall it was meant to close.md](references/budget-failure-case-studies.md) - a drastic mid-cycle cut drove sponsors out, and only digital visibility kept selling.
## Reserve policy: across editions, not inside one
The contingency stack protects one edition. The reserve protects the organization across editions: it is what lets it survive one failed edition or a shock (a pandemic-type cancellation) without folding. This is a decision with three parts, not a ranked menu - organizations legitimately differ, and nothing below is an industry figure.
Some communities target break-even on every event; others build a small surplus on each large event. Meetups and conferences carry different commitments, so their policies differ.
1. **Target** - the reserve size, self-set, expressed against the organization's own fixed yearly costs (for example, a number of months of fixed cost) or against the largest single non-recoverable commitment it signs. Never a percentage borrowed from another event.
2. **Contribution per event** - how much each edition adds or draws, as its own budget line. A large ticketed event is the natural contributor; a free meetup evening usually contributes nothing and may draw.
3. **What the reserve may fund** - written down before it is needed. Typical permitted uses: absorbing a failed edition's deficit, deposits for the next edition before sponsor money lands, seeding a new chapter in another city from a surplus. Anything not on the list needs the same second-approver rule as other major spend (Q9).
Policy shapes, both legitimate:
- **Break-even each edition** - surplus is not a goal; the reserve is whatever the contingency floor leaves unspent. Fits a meetup series whose commitments are small and short (a room, drinks), where one failed evening is survivable from organizers' pockets or the annual-funding budget.
- **Surplus on large events** - each large ticketed edition carries a planned contribution line. Fits an organization signing venue deposits and multi-month commitments, where one failed edition without a reserve ends the organization.
Hand the reserve's legal holding and any tax treatment of a surplus to the fiscal host or counsel (see "What this skill will never state"); a non-profit's surplus rules are jurisdiction-specific.
## Outflow commitment posture
How the budget commits money against revenue not yet banked - the liquidity question, distinct from `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-planning-timeline`'s choice of buffer mechanic. That skill owns the calendar; this one decides how far the discipline goes and hands the dates back. Ranking (default, not a law - re-rank against Q5, Q6, Q8):
- effort (tracking work, counterparty conversations, standing attention through the sale window): `staged against a tracked signal > latest safe date > earliest date allowed`
- value (money still in hand when a revenue line misses, and quantities committed against a real number): `staged against a tracked signal == latest safe date > earliest date allowed`
- compliance cost (the review each posture triggers and the reversibility it costs at the moment of payment): `earliest date allowed > latest safe date > staged against a tracked signal`
- efficiency: `latest safe date > staged against a tracked signal > earliest date allowed`
**Dominance check: 3 pairs, zero strict-dominance relations.** Two mechanisms block it:
- The two pairs against earliest-date-allowed fail on effort: keeping more money in hand costs strictly more tracking and counterparty attention, even though it is cheaper on reversibility.
- Staged against latest-safe ties on value, each cheaper on a different cost axis (staged spends less reversibility, latest-safe less attention), so neither is at least equal on both.
Staged and latest-safe tie on value: both leave the same money uncommitted on the same date. They differ only in whether commitment arrives as one decision or several, which changes _when you learn_, not how much you keep. Learning is a demand read `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-market-fit` already owns, so it is not counted twice here.
Compliance cost is real here, expressed as reversibility, never money. Paying before a stated cancellation date spends recoverability you were under no obligation to spend, and it does not come back.
A room block or catering guarantee committed at full size carries a usage threshold owed regardless of turnout. A small block grown in steps keeps exposure proportional to what is confirmed - see [references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md](references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md) for the staging tactic in practice.
- **Latest safe date** - the default and the efficiency winner: identify, per commitment, the last date it can be made without losing the thing, and hold until then. The asymmetry is the whole argument - adding capacity late is cheap and fast, unwinding a committed order is expensive or impossible.
- **Staged against a tracked signal** - the starved option: ties top on value, tops effort, so efficiency never leads with it. Promotion condition (Q5 + Q8): the commitment carries a threshold owed regardless of turnout **and** someone can hold a standing tracking job through the sale window. Both required; staging without a tracker is just a smaller order.
- **Earliest date allowed** - the do-nothing baseline, kept in the menu only so the reader can see what it costs. It tops compliance cost and buys nothing back.
**Delete, do not demote: earliest date allowed, whenever Q11 says no counterparty offers a genuine early-payment discount** - from this menu and the axis lines. With nothing on the other side of the reversibility it spends, it is a pure loss that, parked at the bottom, reappears as "we may as well pay it, it's budgeted."
## What this skill will never state
- **A tax rate, threshold, form name, or registration requirement, as though it were general.** Ticket and sponsorship revenue follow different, jurisdiction-specific rules - see [references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md](references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md) for contrasting jurisdiction examples. The answer comes from the fiscal host, a local accountant, or counsel.
- **A contingency percentage presented as an industry convention.** Size it from the three tools in the stack above and label the result self-set.
- **A venue or vendor price benchmark.** No published benchmark exists for either; three real quotes on one identical requirements sheet is the substitute, owned by `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-venue-sourcing` and `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-vendor-sourcing`.
- **A named accounting platform, ticketing platform or fiscal host as a recommendation.** Fee structures appear in the references as published facts about a market, not as picks.
## Failure modes
- **Per-head costs budgeted off the registration count.** The registration count is who was accepted; the expected-show-up number is who eats. Catering ordered against the first is over-ordered by construction.
- **A budget that is profitable and still fails.** Deposits leave before sponsor invoices are paid - see [references/budget-failure-case-studies.md](references/budget-failure-case-studies.md) for two cases of exactly this shape. Read the lowest cash point, not the bottom line.
- **Announcing a date before there is a working way to process money.** Settle who holds the money, and how long it takes to get back out, before the date goes public - an organizing guide states this failure directly in [references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md](references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md).
- **One budget instead of three tiers.** A single budget has one break-even and no move except cancelling. The ladder exists so a revenue miss has a response that is not a cancellation.
- **Treating the money-handling share as a rounding error.** A fiscal host's cut and processing fees come off everything passing through, on both rails, before any line is funded.
- **Modelling sponsor revenue as independent of scope.** Sponsors price on reach; a downgrade that shrinks the event shrinks sponsorship too, and sponsors may withdraw outright. Re-estimate sponsor revenue per tier and price each cut net of the sponsorship it loses.
- **Signing the venue before demand is proven.** A large venue signed before sales are known turns a demand miss into a drastic mid-cycle cut, which then costs sponsor revenue on top of attrition (see [references/budget-failure-case-studies.md](references/budget-failure-case-studies.md)). Size the venue commitment to the Good tier, or hold it to the latest safe date.
- **No reserve policy.** Break-even every time is a legitimate choice only when made on purpose; by default it means one failed edition or one shock ends the organization. Write the target, the per-event contribution and the permitted uses.
- **Membership tied to event ticket discounts.** Members join just before each event, the member count spikes and distorts, and income stays coupled to single events. Decouple membership and annual sponsorship from any one edition.
- **Speaker travel folded into the speakers' dinner line.** Travel and hotel reimbursement scales per speaker and per distance, not per head; hidden inside a small appreciation line, it is the first overrun nobody saw coming.
- **Cutting a fixed structural line first.** Attrition thresholds and food-and-beverage minimums are owed on the commitment, so the penalty can exceed the saving. Follow the cut order.
- **Quoting a contingency percentage, or a tax rule, as a standard.** Neither has an event-industry standard behind it. Saying so costs nothing; inventing either gets discovered by an auditor or a tax authority.
- **Reading one published event's revenue split as a norm.** The three published actuals disagree almost completely. They bound the space of real postures; none of them is a target.
- **Re-deriving a ticket or sponsor price to make the model balance.** That produces a second number competing with the prices `event-ticket-pricing` and `event-sponsor-pricing` already set. Change the target and hand it back instead.
## Measurement
This skill sets one binary gate for itself, plus the self-set observables below. Pick two or three of them, and write down before the first commitment what each would change.
**Gate (binary, checkable):** at the first go/no-go date, every cost line carries either a dated quote or an explicit "no quote yet" label, and the cash-flow schedule has a computed lowest point. A budget with silent placeholders has not been built yet, whatever its total says. Iterate until this passes.
- **Variance per line, planned against actual** (self-set): the number `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-debrief` will ask for. Per line, never as one total - a total nets an underestimate against an overestimate and teaches nothing.
- **Lowest projected cash point against the lowest actual cash point** (self-set): if the actual trough is far below the projection, the inflow dates were optimistic, which is a different fix from the costs being wrong.
- **Contingency drawn against contingency held** (self-set): drawing none for several editions is evidence the floor is oversized; drawing all of it is evidence the pad is undersized.
- **Which tier the event actually ran at, against which was planned** (self-set): a ladder that never downgrades and never upgrades is not being used as a ladder.
- **Sponsor revenue at the tier actually run, against the per-tier estimate** (self-set): a gap after a downgrade means the reach effect was under-modelled.
- **Reserve balance against the reserve target** (self-set): read once per year, not per edition.
- **Membership joins by month** (self-set, where membership exists): spikes in the weeks before each event mean membership is still coupled to events.
## Invocation examples
- "We are planning a 250-person community conference and have a venue quote and nothing else. Build me the budget."
- "Sponsorship is at 60% of target with eight weeks to go - what do we cut, and in what order?"
- "Our hackathon is free to attend. How do I work out what we need to raise, and how much cushion?"
- "The venue wants a deposit in March but sponsor invoices are not due until June. Are we going to run out of money?"
- "We run a monthly meetup with annual sponsors. How should the yearly budget and our reserve work?"
- "Ticket sales are far behind plan for our two-day conference. If we cut to one day, what happens to sponsorship?"
Expected output: a budget model containing:
- The format and revenue posture, named in the first line.
- The cost taxonomy, split into fixed and per-head, with each per-head line's driver.
- Every line, labelled with a dated quote or an explicit placeholder.
- The top-of-budget deductions.
- The sponsorship and ticket targets, with their arithmetic.
- Three costed tiers, with a break-even each.
- The contingency figure, with the three tools stated separately.
- The reserve policy and this edition's contribution or draw.
- A dated cash-flow schedule, with its lowest point marked.
- The open tax question, written as a question.
Deliver it section by section for validation, with every number labelled published or self-set.
## References
- [references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md](references/cost-taxonomies-and-sourced-benchmarks.md) - the two cost taxonomies with their fixed/per-head cut, the published itemized P&Ls and revenue splits with their events, years and sources, the per-person unit benchmarks, the comp and scholarship allocation figures with their caveats, and how to carry any of it across by ratio.
- [references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md](references/cash-flow-fiscal-hosting-and-tax.md) - deposit and attrition mechanics, sponsorship payment schedules, fiscal-host fee structures with their dates and one recent structural change, fund-access timing, and the jurisdictional tax contrasts as examples routed to counsel.
- [references/budget-failure-case-studies.md](references/budget-failure-case-studies.md) - five published events plus one anonymized case (scope cut costing sponsor revenue) read for their financial mechanism rather than their headline cause, and what each one implies for a line in this model.
See also, same collection:
- `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-first-edition` - sequences when the three tiers get chosen for a first edition.
- `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@corporate-event-strategy` - at the company-run pole, decides who owns the funding line and what it is funded to accomplish; this skill models the money that ownership already settled and never picks the owner.
- `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@event-format-selection` - decides whether program inventory may be sold as a funding source at all.
- `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills@hackathon-cash-prize` - sizes a prize pool inside the Prizes line this skill sets.