MUN Conference Budget: What It Costs and How to Set Your Fees

Most first conferences do not fail because the fee was too low. They fail because the budget was built in the wrong direction: someone picked a fee that felt reasonable, multiplied it by an optimistic headcount, and spent against the result. This guide builds it the other way round, which is the only way that survives a bad registration year. For the income that does not come from fees, see our MUN conference sponsorship guide.

All figures below are illustrative ranges in euros. Venue and catering costs vary by a factor of five between countries and between a school hall and a hired conference centre, so treat the structure and the ratios as the transferable part, not the numbers.

The two budgets you actually need#

Write two, not one, and keep them separate on two sheets.

• The committed-cost budget. Everything you owe whether 90 delegates come or 300. Venue, insurance, any minimum spend, deposits. This number is your risk, and it is the number to show whoever is approving the conference.
• The per-delegate budget. Everything that scales with headcount: catering, printing, badges, materials, payment fees. This is what the fee has to cover, plus a share of the committed costs.

The reason to separate them is that they behave differently under stress. If registration is 30 percent down, the per-delegate budget shrinks with it and the committed budget does not move at all. A single combined spreadsheet hides that, which is exactly when you need to see it.

Every line item#

Venue is usually the whole argument

At a school or university that gives you rooms for nothing, a conference can run on catering and printing alone, and a modest fee covers it comfortably. At a hired venue, room hire is typically the single largest line and can be half the budget.

Before you sign anything, get four things in writing: the room hire and what it includes, whether AV is included or billed separately, whether there is a minimum catering spend, and the date by which final numbers must be confirmed. That last date is the one that determines your financial risk, and it is the one people forget to negotiate. A venue that will take final numbers ten days out is worth paying more for than one that wants them four weeks out.

Size the rooms before you commit: one room per committee with room for the largest committee plus 15 percent, plus one room for the secretariat, plus one space large enough for everybody at once. Splitting the opening ceremony into two sittings is a known and survivable compromise if the large space is what is driving your cost. Our venue logistics guide covers choosing and booking the rooms.

Setting the delegate fee#

Build it in four layers, in this order.

Then sense-check against the market. Look at what three comparable conferences in your region charge, with what included. If your number is 40 percent above them, the problem is your venue, not your maths.

Break-even, worked at three sizes#

Illustrative. Committed costs assume a modestly priced external venue; a free school venue moves every one of these numbers sharply down.

Read the last row rather than the fee. The small conference breaks even at 81 percent of target, which means a disappointing year is survivable. The large one does not break even at its target at all: at a 60 euro fee it needs 547 delegates to cover 14,000 of committed cost, so either the fee rises, the venue cost falls, or sponsorship closes the gap. That is the entire argument for starting small, expressed as arithmetic.

The four costs first-timers forget#

1. Payment processing

Card processing typically costs somewhere around 1.5 to 3 percent plus a fixed amount per transaction, and international cards and currency conversion cost more. On 15,000 of fees that is a few hundred, which is real money that nobody put in the spreadsheet. Bank transfers look free and are not: international transfers carry charges, and more importantly they carry an administrative cost in your treasurer's hours.

2. Insurance

Ask your institution whether its public liability cover extends to a public event with external attendees, including under-18s. Often it does. Sometimes it explicitly does not, and finding that out four days before is not a position you want to be in.

3. Accessibility

Step-free routes between committee rooms, a quiet room, dietary provision that is actually edible, and captioning or interpretation if requested. Budget a line for it even if the number is zero, because a request arriving three weeks out with no budget line becomes a decision about money rather than a decision about access.

4. The gap between registered and paid

Some registered delegates never pay and some paid delegates never arrive. At a first conference expect a meaningful gap between the three numbers of registered, paid and attended, and find out what yours is so you can plan around it next year. Budget catering against paid, not registered, and set your payment deadline before your catering numbers deadline so the two agree.

Fee structures that work#

• Early bird. 10 to 20 percent off for registering and paying before a cut-off. Its real purpose is cash flow, not marketing: it brings money in before you pay the venue balance.
• Delegation rate. A per-school charge plus a lower per-delegate fee, or a discount above a threshold of delegates. It rewards the schools that bring twelve students and cost you one relationship to manage instead of twelve.
• Role-based fees. Observers and press at a reduced rate. Faculty advisors usually free or at cost, because charging the person who decides whether the school comes at all is a false economy.
• Chairs. Never charged. They are staff.
• Financial aid. Decide the policy before you open registration: how many places, full or partial, and on what evidence. A small, quiet, documented scheme funded from your contingency is far better than an unbudgeted case-by-case one, because the latter always ends up deciding under time pressure.

Cash flow#

Draw the timeline of money in and money out, month by month, on one sheet. Two questions decide whether it works.

• What must be paid before any fee arrives? Usually the venue deposit and the domain. If that number is larger than what your society or department can float, you need either a smaller deposit, a later venue, or a sponsor before you commit.
• When does the venue balance fall due relative to your registration deadline? If the balance is due before registration closes, you are paying with money you do not have yet. Negotiate the balance date, or move the early bird earlier.

Stage deposits where you can: a deposit on booking, a second at numbers confirmation, the balance after the event is a common and very reasonable ask for a venue that wants repeat business from a conference that intends to run annually. Say that out loud when negotiating.

What software costs, and the per-user trap#

This line deserves its own section because it behaves unlike every other cost in the budget.

Some conference platforms charge the organiser per participant per day. That model scales against you precisely as the conference succeeds: a good year, where registration overshoots, raises your bill at the moment you are least able to renegotiate. It is also a committed cost signed months before you know your headcount, which is the worst category for a first-year budget.

Gavelling takes the other side of that. The organiser is charged nothing. Participant payments run through your own Stripe Connect account, so you are merchant of record: the money is yours, and the platform fee, 5 percent, plus the card processing pass-through, is shown and recomputed server-side rather than invoiced to you later. Manual payment with proof review exists for the many delegations that pay by bank transfer. The comparison against the paid platforms, with their actual published pricing, is in best MUN software in 2026 and the mymun alternative comparison.

For the committee side specifically, free tools are compared in our free MUN tools guide, and you can open a Gavelling session with no account at /create to see what a projected speakers list looks like in your actual room before committing to anything.

Building the spreadsheet#

Four tabs. It takes an hour and it is the hour that makes every later decision easy.

• Assumptions. Target headcount, conservative headcount, days, committees, fee, processing rate. Everything else references this tab, so a scenario is one number changed.
• Committed costs. One row per line, with the date it is committed and whether it can be unwound.
• Per-delegate costs. One row per line, multiplied by headcount from the assumptions tab.
• Break-even. Contribution per delegate, break-even headcount, and the same three numbers at 70, 85 and 100 percent of target.

Then show it to your treasurer and to whoever approves the event, and ask them to attack the assumptions tab specifically. That is where every wrong budget is wrong.

Next#

If you have not yet committed to running a conference, read how to start one from scratch first: scope is the decision that determines the whole budget. If you have, the planning timeline tells you when each of these payments falls due, and the director guide covers running the thing once the money is sorted.