The cost of a fest

handling finances The organising teams of college fests have to put in a lot of hard work.

Putting together a college fest isn’t an easy task. Core committees at different institutes work for months together, planning together the different facets of these programmes and ensuring that they are flawlessly executed.

They generally begin by figuring out the financial angle of the event — that is, identifying and convincing sponsors — after which they get to work on the specific events.

They have to ensure that word is spread about their fest, and it draws enough
participation from other colleges in the City.

Besides this, every fest requires a few celebrities — no matter how small-scale the fest is, to judge the various competitions.

Not surprisingly, organising an event of this scale isn’t cheap.

Students generally approach large corporates for a bulk of the sponsorship but despite this, there are many small expenses that the organising team has to meet themselves.

This could vary from transportation charges to paying to have photographs
developed.

Metrolife speaks to the organisers from different colleges across the City to find out how they handle these expenses.

Swati Bondia, a final-year student who is part of the core organising team of Acharya Institute of Management and Sciences, agrees that there are certain areas in which the students themselves have to spend.

   “First and foremost, I suppose, would be the cost of transport. There’s some running around which has to be done while organising a fest, such as going to meet corporates for funds. We end up spending a certain amount as travel expenses,” she says, adding, “Besides this, we design posters and pamphlets from scratch so there’s some expenditure there.”

In AIMS, the core team selects a few students who are good photographers and hand them the responsibility of documenting the fest. “Once these students are selected, they are in charge of taking the pictures, selecting the good ones and having them printed. They have to hand over a complete set of photographs to us,” she
explains.

Nikita Manwani, the president of Baldwin Women’s Methodist College, explains that when they were putting together Manthan — the college’s annual fest — there was some expenses which cropped up. Largely, though, the college reimbursed the core team for  amount they spend.

“There were some last-minute expenses which weren’t covered by the sponsorship. For instance, we forgot about getting participation passes printed and ended up doing that on the day before the fest. We collected money from the college for that, as well as for the banners and other decorations,” she explains.

In general, the team keeps records of everything they spend on and produce bills to be reimbursed.

But Nikita admits that there are some expenses they have to meet themselves.

“Transportation charges are included in that. In general, each member of the team might end up spending between Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 on a fest,” she adds.

At Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, expenses are handled according to a system of advance and reimbursement.

Aditya, a member of the organising team at the college, elaborates, “Before any event, we have to hand in an estimate of our budget to the college and we’re given an advance based on that in cash. Post the programme, we have to co-relate all the bills and expenses and hand them over. Reimbursement sometimes gets delayed because this goes to the parent university to get sanctioned.”

However, because of this system, students rarely end up spending anything of
their own.

“Small expenses are covered by the advance payment. Sometimes, the process might take a while but we always get out money back,” he concludes.