Budget

Will defo be more complicated to manually manage 2 payments but nothing that a good spreadsheet can’t handle, I imagine 😅 would have to make clear that there’d be no chasing people for the final payment - there’s a deadline to plan for, and if second payments aren’t received within EG 3 days tickets will be re-released.

On platforms, I think using a payment service over bank transfers would be easier but if we use PayPal for EG, we’d probably have to pay business fees. Just used a Typeform to pay for something and it integrated Stripe to make the payment. Just checking how much that costs but I think it’s 2.9% + 30p per transaction. I’m wondering if we could add that on as a ‘booking fee’...

Ahhhh right- that clears that up. I thought Sam had referred to 110 as a final figure so that's with the cheeky addition added in rather than full adults. Understood.

The only thing with re-releasing unused kids tickets is the max. attendees is supposed to be 100. So the kids would be a cheeky addition

Not sure what payment platforms have already been floated but I suppose something like that will add to the transaction fee which we havent accounted for? Manual processing with a good old spreadsheet might be the way!

also agreed!!

-- the yurts, do we know if we are able to cancel them at this point or is that locked in?

-- single cost at c75pp with two installments seems v reasonable to me! that way the low budget tickets can moderate themselves via no / v minimal contributions to pot 2.

will two installments complicate payment process however? there was an option for manual ticket processing (free) but this will double the workload there.

looking into insurance asap so we can lock down that cost

Yes to paying in installments!

Hello!

I agree that 100 x full price would be simpler and would also say that if we dont get any kids or u17s then we could open up a final release of full price tickets for those remaining out of the 15 forecast which could also be added to the buffer.

Personally I prefer Option 1 (Memberships forecast sheet 2), IF we decide to slim down fixed costs by cancelling the additional 2 yurts and reducing buffer from 20% to 10%.

So: sell 100 x adult memberships @ £75pp + 15 x under 18s memberships (u15s go free, 15-17s = £30. Any monies raised from teen memberships contributes to buffer). No lower priced tickets but everyone has the option to pay in 2 installments. The first being a £25 deposit, the second being the final £50, due on payday in Jan or Feb.

BUDGET

Reducing costs

Wow, l propose we seek to save some dosh somewhere to make it more affordable. I've done some rough calculations on sheet 2 of the fixed costs budget. See here. If we ditch the additional 2 yurts (booked for duration), and reduce the buffer from 20% to 10%, adding on £350 for insurance, our total fixed costs would be approx. £7476.70. This would be a saving of around £2.4k when including insurance.

We could let members know that there are 2 luxory yurts on-site that we decided not to book to reduce costs. If members want to coordiante and book them as sleeping spaces themselves, they'd be free to do so. Members could also propose to realise dreams in them, and try to raise the cash for them through the Dreams process.

Insurance + Buffer

If we reduce the buffer to 10% we'd only have about £680. This is likely less than the excess on insurance, which is £1k for Micro Burn. Risk worth taking? We could probably make up the dosh if we absolutely had to due to something going terribly wrong. Another consideration is that we wouldn't have much £££ to seed something next year (presuming the buffer isn't spent). BUT if a venue costs £6-7k we'd probably be able to make up a deposit.

MEMBERSHIPS

Based on the alternative fixed costs, I've drawn up 5 possible options for memberships prices. See Sheet 2 here.

Children's memberships

Done some calculations for all u18s going free, or u15s going free and 15-17s priced at £30pp. We may not have many teens attending so any dosh raised from that could go in the buffer, and not be counted on to cover our fixed costs.

Low Income options

I reckon £50 is a good price for low income options, even if the standard membership price reduces. Another possibility could be all standard price, but there's an option to pay, say, a £20 deposit and the remaining amount around Jan (or Feb?) payday. If final amounts not paid within a few days of deadline, memberships can be re-released to those on waiting lists. I think this is pretty fair...

Haven’t had a chance to open the spreadsheets yet, but great work Emily!! Just wanted to note that we will defo need public liability insurance, and we just got it down to £300/400 at Microburn, but the excess increased from 250ish to £1k

Hey all - so I have compiled two documents:

1. fixed cost budget (pot 1)

2. membership cost predictions under different scenarios (pot 1 + pot 2)

1 - for the fixed cost budget: this document is not really very different to the initial costing forecasts, except we now know we have an option for no cost ticket sales, I have added data protection predicted fee (don't know much about this, took cost from government website), I have added a first aid kit (small cost), and importantly I am unsure about insurance. I am fairly certain we will need some insurance but really don't know much about this -- I have added a trello card to look into it but no bites yet, perhaps we can flag more widely at the meeting? I can help sort it out -- that said, strongly suspect someone in the community already has knowledge about this and could save a lot of time! I have noted that microburn spends c. 1000 on insurance annually.

another cost not noted on the budget is potential for storage - likely not needed for the first year but worth noting

finally the fixed cost budget includes a 20% of total buffer - with hopes of keeping some funds for next year or at the very least avoiding overspend in unforeseen circumstances.

have i missed anything that is a legal etc requirement? any thoughts? what about the size of the buffer - any thoughts?

link to document in drive: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16WOeJLiXPsemB9g8clgA5kSdlo2QibenEz3jjP9FFPY/edit#gid=0

2 - membership cost predictions

note: because we don't know the situation with insurance the costs can be taken as underestimates, expect them to go up by up to 10% to add insurance / anything i may have forgotten. sheet is set up to update automatically so we can change it easily.

i have made 4 scenarios with different numbers of reduced cost ("low-income") tickets, either just different numbers of half-price or one scenario with half-price / quarter-price - and how this affects full price. this is covering the cost of pot 1.

for pot 2 i have calculated how large the pot would be with different average contribution sizes to pot 2 at the point of buying membership - so we can have an idea and also give guidance on how much is hoped for. i have assumed that anyone buying a low-cost ticket will not contribute to pot 2.

finally the total membership costs are predicted based on the fixed cost (pot 1) plus differnet levels of pot 2 contribution.

any thoughts? how do you feel about the % of lower cost tickets? this does mean setting boundaries for total available numbers. also i had a few thoughts about children as noted in the document - i am assuming 10 - 15 children will attend free of charge, but what age range does that include, and never discussed this with anyone

link to document in drive: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1itip-X-xFTNZMAXCSovH4jx3H7Vd-T1x5DYKov3C-Lk/edit#gid=0

hope this all makes sense! i can be reached by text later on today but can't come back to this fully until tomorrow night, sorry!

ye agree with both of you -- not only doesn't feel good to charge differently but would also be a logistical nightmare!! i reckon many with their own set-up may also prefer the privacy of the tent (well, that is my preference so perhaps i am biased there) - but also agree with fran that it may be a good shout to keep some small spaces as warm communal spaces / perhaps cozy spots / workshop / hangout areas (or spaces for people to "take over" / adopt to do things with?). seems there are a small number of beds in extra luxurious/small spots -- these spaces could be saved as workshop/activity etc spaces?

100% agree we shouldn’t have different prices for different comfort levels. I also think considering the weather, we should ‘reserve’ some of the smaller warm spaces for workshops, jam spaces etc etc. It could be that the remaining bedded areas are then allocated via a random lottery between all those who choose to enter it. They could enter by ticking a box when they purchase membership. Anyone who has their own setup (vans and what not) won’t enter. Once all memberships have been sold the lottery will run. Those who don’t have own setup and weren’t allocated beds in the lottery could then hook up with others to sort their own heated accomm (eg hiring extra bell tents) should they so desire. Since the base membership fee would likely be very reasonable (cheap) I don’t think this is asking too much of people...

I was looking into bed spaces, thinking about what could/ would a membership get you, thinking about what process to use to set price. If we think about memberships in their purest form, they could be - a monetary amount that you swap with the Celtic Burn org. to make the event happen. It could be that it doesn't equate to much more than that? (Conditional on the 2 pot theory as outlined above).

At a rough count it looks like we could have a potential 55 matresses in matress spaces (beds). This leaves the only communal space as the roundhouse and the cooking marquee. We could bring in a dome or two for communal spaces. It feels all kinds of wrong to me that people pay different prices for different comfort levels e.g. a tent vs a matress on a floor vs a lux yurt bed. If you can afford to camp/ van (with suitable April equipment) then maybe you should?

If the signup/ membership process works with a questionair/ google sheet 1st come system, it could also haev a questin for accomodation prefrence. Then as we email out for membership payment info we could just stop when we reach 55 indoor prefrences. The remaining memberships could then go to people lower down on the list for camping/ van prefrence. This doesn't take into account hiring additional heated yurts. It could be that once memberships have been exchanged, members become more engaged and there is more community energy to solve this challenge. This is a + for the argument that everyone pays an equal flat fee for a memberships.

I like your budget proposal! I think this is also quite an inclusive and flexible approach. Only possible extra consideration I would add is the size of the buffer in pot 1 - given it is the first year and there is no back-up. I've witnessed people ending up out of pocket in similiar instances. The team establishing the fixed costs could aim to be somewhat conservative about this to cover potential unpredicted costs?