Suggestions for Planning our HOA Picnic

Ok...I hope this one doesn't get too complicated or our of control HAHA! So this year will be the first year we are bringing back our HOA picnic. The prior board skipped it for the past 3 years. From what I was told, about 250 people (adults and kids) attended the last one in 2011. There are no records or anything to explain what was bought for the event so we are kind of winging it.

I expect we will have a larger turnout this year because we have been advertising it for the past 2 months. Here is the only thing I am not sure about when it comes to ordering food. If we assume we will have a total of 300 adults and kids total, how should we figure how many hamburgers and hot dogs to purchase? And before this gets carried away, let me declare the following - No, we can not get a head count from the home owners as to how many will show up. It has been tried before and few responded but many showed up.

I just want to come up with some relatively safe numbers. Off the 300 I think will attend, I suspect 100 will be children. I do not know of what formula to use to try to figure out if I should get 200 hamburgers and 100 hot dogs when we all know some people will come back for seconds and kids can eat more than 1 hot dogs. I wold rather be a little long than come up short.

Gregg

I've planned a few parties for our HOA. The show up fluctuated. Are you using HOA funds for this party? Are you also doing a potluck type set up? Do you have an area with enough tables/chairs/play room? Who is doing the cooking and have enough grills?

What I would plan for is not for the number who attends but what happens if you have too much food. Are you going to donate it? Keep it and have another event? You may end up in a situation where this happens and if the food is paid with HOA funds you have to figure how best to handle that financial wise.

Why not take a quick non-scientific poll on who is attending? It doesn't have to be fancy or official. Just a general feed back question to get a general idea of how it is being accepted in the community. If you find people complaining, then you can figure out why such event stopped.

Heads up... I had a few "parties" for certain events and even with announcing they had little turn out. My most successful event was Halloween. That was because we had ALL the kids meet up at the clubhouse and disperse from there. The owner could drop off candy if they would not be home. Plus they knew when our kids had gone through. So think about how your culture in your HOA works. Do they like picnics? Is it on or near a holiday?

I agree with Tim, plan on 2 items each. Usually 1 hot dog and 1 hamburger per person. If you have a lot of kids then, they may do more hotdogs and burgers. Good luck!