To Charge or not to Charge?
Knowing how much and if to charge for beginner activities can be challenging. If priced too high it can put people off trying the sport however, if activities are free they run at a loss. Balancing this is tricky.
Taster/ Beginner Session Charges
For the Summer of Sport family coaching sessions, led by young coaches we charged £1.50 per person. Most family groups were paying between £3-6 to attend. We felt this pricing worked well as most people who signed up turned up and map printing costs were covered. When SOA has previously run activities free of charge, a higher proportion of people have signed up and not shown up on the day or have pulled out at the last moment. Charging makes participants value the activity more. Most of the sessions ran with around 20 participants.
However, when working with some organisations including Active Schools, they are not able to charge pupils to reduce the barrier to participation.
SOA have also run full day adult beginner sessions; these have been charged at £30 per person. We have averaged eight participants at these sessions. This charge enables us to mostly break even on these sessions covering printing costs and the cost of a lead coach. All the participants who filled out the feedback form agreed that the day was good value for money.
In terms of entry systems we used Eventbrite for both the Summer of Sport and Adult Beginners. This does take a cut of 6.95% + £0.59 per paid ticket.
Local Events
The most common member price for taking part in a local event is between £5-6, for non-members this is £6.50-8. Junior entries are £2-5.
Permanent Orienteering Courses (POC) Costs
Most commonly clubs offer free digital map download for their permanent courses on the club website or through GoOrienteering. Forth Valley charges £2 to download a map.
ESOC requests a suitable donation in exchange for map packs, including both paper and digital copies. Interestingly ESOC have made more money from permanent courses since asking for donations rather than a £2 charge.
Some clubs including Roxburgh Reivers have printed copies of maps in visitor centres including at Traquair House, near Innerleithen and Wilton Park, Hawick. These are priced at £1 per map.
