Limitations and restrictions

Before you finalise your decision, you should consider external factors and circumstances that restrict or limit your range of choices. Remember all events are unique, so the restrictions listed below are only included to illustrate the point. This is not exhaustive list. You must consider other likely or possible restrictions, bearing in mind your own circumstances. For example you might be limited by:

Objective

Sometimes the event objective almost dictates the type of event you will run. Whether the objective is imposed on you by a club, committee or other governing body or you define the objective yourself. If your objective states that ‘the club will run a golf tournament with a final on 3rd August’, you will be running a golf tournament with the final on 3rd August! If your objective is less restrictive, for example ‘to make money’, or ‘to organise our company fun day’, you have greater choice and scope for innovation and diversification.

Skills and experience

Sometimes the event type is restricted or limited by the available skills and experience of the people proposing to run it. For example if girls from a remote village pony club decide that they want to put on a pony show, their limitation is that they only have one pony, their only audience is three girls in the village who are not members of the club and the only venue they are allowed to use is the village school field.

Circumstances

Sometimes the circumstances dictate or severely restrict the type of event. For example, if the inmates of a prison ask for permission to put on an event involving escape equipment, I think the answer would be no!

Financial/time constraints

Time or financial constraints may dictate or severely restrict your options. For example, if your office manager asks you to organise an event for 200 people – by lunchtime and with a budget of £150 – it looks like it’s going to be cheap beer and Karaoke!

Season

Though the concept may be sound, you may be seasonally restricted. For example you will fail if you attempt to organise an ice-skating display on the local lake in summer, or a golf tournament in January in 3 feet of snow.

Club/legal rules

Club rules and legal restrictions may dictate how funds or premises are to be used. For example legal restrictions may prevent a charity from spending funds on hiring a hall and advertising a fund-raising caged bird show, even though you forecast a huge profit will be paid into the charity funds.

Investigation

You may find that your research and investigation places a limit on the type of event that you can organise. For example if you are located in a major city and you want to run an event in your clubhouse where the maximum door size is 7 feet high and 5 feet wide, your event is restricted to what you can get in through that door.

Audience

It is possible that your audience is fixed, so you have to present an event that they will want to see, where and when they want to see it. For example if your local school has retained you to deliver a Christmas show for 350 children aged 11 to 17, no matter how enthusiastic, interested and skilled you are in engraving milk bottles, a milk bottle engraving show will probably not be acceptable.