Money

Any event will cost money to run, and also will ask for participation fees.

Calculation

Since everything usually comes with a cost involved, making a good calculation is essential for the success of the event. And it's also a great way to not forget things.

Costs will vary a lot between different countries or even cities. Also things you do yourself will be cheaper than things someone else sells to you. This will be mostly relevant for drinks and food.

How do you know what should be part of the calculation?

Start with listing all your costs, splitting them as fixed costs (doesn't matter how many people come – you'll still need to pay for this), and variable costs (only occur for each participant).

Essentially, every answer to the Questions for organizers will have a price, either directly in "cash" or in "time", which can also be converted to "cash" if you know who will do it.

Break-even

Make best-case scenario for the rough amount of people you want to have there. Make a minimal-case scenario that has enough participants for the event to not be "depressing", and set that as your break-even number, which will cover all costs.

Set your participation fee based on this number. This is the point at which you have enough participants for the event to just pay for itself. All needed costs are covered, which usually does not include any working hours the organizers put into the event.

Play with more participants, and play with adding extra "features" if you have more money to spend because you are above break-even.

Budgets

Since you won't know your exact costs yet, you will need to work with budgets in your calculation.

Table 1: Estimate budgets for food (2018 levels, Germany)

What	self	external
Breakfast	3 EUR / person	5-7 EUR / person 1)
Dinner	10 EUR / person	15-25 EUR / person 2)
Snacks	1-2 EUR / person	3-5 EUR / person 3)

Participation Fees

Currently, known ranges from 2019 data.

Event Type	minimum EUR	average EUR 4)	maximum EUR	comment
Milonga	free	3-10	155)
Marathon no food	50	80	120
Marathon with food	100	130	150
Encuentro	30	80	100

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¹⁾ , ²⁾ Catering

³⁾ Catering, Hotel, Bar

⁴⁾ just a rough average

⁵⁾ e.g. with live music

⁶⁾ no food included

⁷⁾ food included