Budgeting and Funding

A 5-person Small Working Group (SWG) has studied the budgets of 5 previous Medsin conferences and produced a short Conference Budget and Fundraising Guide, which is attached to this page. A few other useful resources are attached:

  • Presentation explaining Conference Budget SWG
  • Conference Budget and Fundraising Guide
  • Template Budget
  • Previous Conference Budgets for reference and guidence
  • Template sponsorship letters
  • Template invoice
  • Template account spreadsheet

A few other brief tips are below....

The Budget

  • Have one person or a small group of people in charge of this. It has worked well having 1 person in charge of fundraising and another person in charge of the budget.
  • Be ruthless in developing a realistic income and expenditure budget; make conservative assumptions about fundraising.
  • Put budget on Excel spreadsheet and invite review by the conference team and the national committee.
  • When decided on the registration fee, remember to factor in the administration charges if using google checkout or paypal.

Fundraising

  • Don’t spend ages pouring through library trust books or writing to anyone you can think of.
  • Develop plan for obtaining sponsors, grants, etc. Develop generic letters for soliciting support and include appropriate informational materials about the Medsin, the conference and past conferences.
  • Agree as a group which companies you will accept funding from. If you have an doubts regarding the ethics of a company, please contact the Medsin National Committee.
  • Focus your efforts on local organisations and institutions. These are more likely to be supportive of a local event.
  • Make sure to contact your medical school, your university and your union.
  • There are also the “BIG” organisations: the BMA and the Lancet who are official externals of Medsin and often support Medsin's activities. However, these organisations should only be approach via the Medsin VPE and Medsin President.
  • Start high - we suggest that you ask for at least £500 at first, as you can then always negotiate a lower sponsorship and it is near impossible to negotiate more than you originally asked for.
  • Offer companies something in return for their funding, e.g. a stall at the conference, their logo on the booklet or website.
  • For further fundraising ideas, click here.

Click here to navigate back to the Conference Guide home page.

Last updated on Wednesday 19 November 2008 at 13:41.