Before you commit to anything
Have you got what it takes to organise a market day?
Six questions, two minutes, nothing sent anywhere and nothing stored. It will not stop you doing anything. It is a mirror, and it is more useful before you have booked a hall than after.
Start here
Event planner capability
Five questions about you, not about the day. Nobody sees your answers but you, nothing is saved, and nothing here stops you creating a market day. It exists because of the one failure this whole thing was built to prevent, which is not a failure of software: somebody books a hall in good faith, finds out in week ten what a marquee costs, and pays three suppliers out of their own account in December.
Between booking the hall and the first ticket money arriving, you will be out of pocket. For a hall sized day that is usually $200 to $1,800, and sometimes more: the venue deposit, insurance, the council application and the first print run.
A donated hall and a cheap print run is the low end. An outdoor site with marquees and hired toilets is well past the top.
Can you carry that, from your own funds or your group's, for about eight weeks?
If the day comes up short, the creditors still have to be paid. Unless an incorporated body is auspicing your day, that is you personally.
This is a plain statement of how the three arrangements differ. It is not legal advice.
Are you able to cover a shortfall if there is one?
The seven days before a market day are not evenly spread. Last minute decisions, stallholders ringing, the site walk, the print run, the setup.
Can you set that week aside?
Have you run an event before? A fete, a fundraiser, a wedding, a big birthday, anything with suppliers and a deadline.
This is not a qualification. A wedding counts. The point is whether you have been on the hook for suppliers and a date before.
Have you been part of an event in the past, from the inside?
On that management team, were you involved in choosing the venue and in the legal paperwork: what a good venue actually has to offer, the insurance, the permits and the agreements?
Two different jobs. Running the raffle and reading a hire agreement are not the same experience, and only one of them tells you what you are walking into here.
Five questions you answer about yourself are a mirror, not a filter. Anybody can tick the top answer five times and walk straight through, so this is here to make you think rather than to decide for you. That is why every answer shows its reasoning and not just a colour.