It is surprising how many companies still organise a children’s party at Christmas.

Well-known commercial organisations including Sony and the AA are among the companies that do. So do many of the large supermarkets, including Tesco and Waitrose; public sector services such as prisons, the Post Office and the Police as well as both chains and independent hotels.

Specialist party event companies often handle the large parties, but the smaller events are usually run by volunteers, or members of staff who are given the role in addition to their normal function as if it is the most natural thing in the world to want to do!

So what do these ‘volunteer’ party organisers have in common? In many cases they have never organised a childrens party in their lives and certainly not one for 45 or more children between the ages of 1-15 years. Running a birthday party for a few of your child’s school mates is bad enough, (they’re all a similar age group for one thing), but setting up a large party for a host of children you’ve never met can be a serious headache!

So, for the novice children’s party organiser here’s a set of tips and ideas to help you budget for the party:

How much have you got to spend on your children’s party? You can’t get away from it, but your event budget pretty much makes or breaks any sizeable children’s party. Bearing this in mind it is worth remembering that the government recently upped their TAX FREE hospitality spend from 75 to 150 per head. If you have been given the responsibility of organising an a childrens party it might be worth pushing for the maximum budget possible!

How much do you need?

To give you an idea, if you use a professional event company, 50 per child based on parties over 200 children, will enable you to have children’s party theming and a wide choice of entertainers, shows and rides. For roughly 40 per child you should succeed in finding a memorable central London location during the day and standard children’s party food.

For a party with fewer children, perhaps you could host the event in-house i.e. in your employee restaurant or a training room. For around 50 children your children’s party budget would need to go up to 60 per child for a completely themed children’s party, but you can often get away with a simpler party and just use a local children’s entertainer for around 250 – 400 for 2 hours.

How about using volunteers to reduce costs?

An organisation’s children’s party can often create a better feel-good effect if the team are involved. If the budget allows, it’s always worth using children’s entertainers and event co-ordinators as much as you can, but there are things that are great for volunteers to get involved in, such as:

* Organising Arts & Crafts

* Santa Claus or elves if a Christmas party

* Face painting (only use water based paints)

* Cookie baking & decorating

* Lucky dips

* Basic balloon making (books can teach you everything you need to know!)

Volunteers are also useful for welcoming children in and generally supervising doors, stairs or looking after Santa and handing out presents. It is always more fun if you ask your volunteers to wear the same so that children know who to approach. People don’t usually require much persuading to put on a set of fairy wings!

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