The highs and lows of delivering free events

We were delighted to work with Themba Technology, Adecoe, GeoScience and QSA Partners over the summer of 2015 to coordinate and deliver the series of heat pump roadshows on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.  These free one-day training courses were designed to help potential heat pump customers in both the domestic and non-domestic sectors – such as businesses, developers and housing providers - understand how heat pumps can deliver lower energy costs, greater comfort and better buildings.

We delivered 15 training courses in just 4 weeks to over 300 people (which is no mean feat!) - but suffered from a drop out rate of 25% - that's 112 people who decided to just not turn up on the day!

We always expect some no-shows at free events, but were working on the assumption that this would be 10-20%.  However, in some cases for the heat pump training the drop-out rate was double this (the worst case was 47% no-shows which was disappointing to say the least!)  But why did this happen and what could we do to prevent it?

It's complicated of course, but I'm of the view that people wildly book onto sessions like this when they first see them advertised without really taking the commitment to attend seriously (which also means we have to turn down someone else).  Also, we had a lot of DEAs book up when the courses were first advertised (I think their Association picked up and disseminated the press release pretty swiftly) and being freelancers, many of them also had to take paid work if it came up. 

We ran a waiting list for all of the training sessions to enable genuine heat pump customers to be prioritised for a place (all the events we've run like this for DECC in the past have been hugely oversubscribed so we've learnt the hard way).  Anyone from the supply chain was asked to wait until two weeks prior to each course to see if spaces were available.  I think this was a fair approach, but did add to the admininstration of the events.  It also meant we had to send out the joining instructions (with the agenda, venue details etc) at least two weeks before each event so we could see if anyone cancelled (and thus freed up a place).  With hindsight, we should probably have sent another reminder to everyone 48 hours before each session, although by that time it would have been too late to offer anyone else the place and/or cancel the catering (and anyway, part of me thinks that we should treat everyone as grown ups and they sholdn't need such constant reminders!) 

Another option to minimise the numbers of no-shows at an event is to charge a nominal fee for attendance (eg £25) so delegates value their booking more (and remember that they made it).  This could either be charged for all bookings or just to those who don’t attend on the day (as we still have to pay for catering - which is not an insignficant cost when you add it all up!) This would need careful consideration though as there would be a considerable administration burden and cost to collecting such small amounts of money. It could also make it harder to provide precise budgets to funders who are looking for a level of certainty about spend.

It's a conundrum to be sure - and I don't know if I have the answers.  What do YOU think?  How often do you miss free-to-attend events?  We all know that things to genuinely crop up sometimes, but how often does the event just pass you by or never quite make it into your diary?  Would paying a nominal fee make a difference?  Answers on a postcard please - or by email of course to rachael.mills@se-2.co.uk or tweet me at @se2_rachael!