Sammelan

KOJAIN Sammelan (Conventions)

Starting in 1971, KOJAINs started gathering regionally for Summer Picnic and Diwali Party occasionally.

1990 was a turning point as attendees at Siddhachalam got enthusiastic and motivated to do a periodic gathering of all KOJAINs in North America.

These Sammelans help attendees refresh and renew friendships and revitalize the memories of Kutch.

 

Congratulations & Kudos to you! If you are reading this guide you are at least thinking about hosting KOJAIN Sammelan – the largest event of its kind that spans across the entire KOJAIN community in North America! This document aims to provide an overview of the considerations that go into planning such an event. This document shies away from quoting specific dollar figures as there is a variance in pricing across regions of North America and we dont want this document to become obsolete over time as inflation creeps in 🙂. For specific dollar figures from recent Sammelans reach out to KOJAIN BOD for documents such as those mentioned in the Reference section at the bottom of this document.

Submitting Initial Proposal to KOJAIN

The purpose of an initial proposal is to show not only to the KOJAIN BOD but also to yourselves that you have key pieces of planning in place to potentially host a Sammelan successfully. Your first proposal to KOJAIN BOD should include information such as:

  • Host Region/City, Proposed Dates/Month
  • Why this City (KOJAIN population within driving distance, why visitor interest)
  • Core Team composition and light BIO (see details below)
  • Your Financial Backing
  • Venue proposal and tentative cost – ok to share data about more than 1 venue
  • Tentative Event Budget (Incoming and Outgoing) – these can be initial raw (low confidence level) numbers that are bound to be refined in a future 2nd proposal after a Go-Ahead from KOJAIN BOD. Read the rest of the doc to see some guidance of areas to consider.
  • What help do you need from KOJAIN BOD

Forming a Core Team

Core Team is the backbone of planning for such a large scale event. This is the team that taking up the social and financial “responsibility” to hosting a Sammelan.

  • Choose people that harmoniously work with each other, yet not afraid to take risks and strive for taking up challenges.
  • Choose people motivated to make the Sammelan happen. They should have the commitment to put in the effort and hours needed to host such a large event.
  • Not a requirement but just nice to go with an odd number of people so that in case of voting you can find a simple majority. The count can be anywhere from 5 to 11 (typically will end up somewhere in between) that you can manage and work with
  • Composition of Team: Some suggestions to consider. More than 1 person is always welcome in each category and 1 person may fit into multiple categories.
    • At least 1 person – with experience of hosting an event with a size of at least 40% of the number of attendees you are expecting. This will help with organizational experience to undertake hosting of this large event
    • At least 1 person – not hesitate to put their own money to give a moral boost in initial planning for deposits and in the end willing to take a hit in case of a loss
    • At least 1 person – connected to not just local region but also with connections in some other regions. Connections will help with raising sponsorship signups as well as persuading people from other regions to register for the Sammelan
    • At least 1 person – financial savvy with budgets and keeping track of balance sheet, does not need to have a degree but ability to manage
    • At least 2 persons – savvy negotiators to engage with Hotels, Caterer, etc
    • At least 1 person – experience with planning cultural programs
    • At least 1 person – experience with planning Program Tracks (conference style)
    • At least 1 person – savvy with food choices and dealing with caterers

Event Size

Past KOJAIN Sammelans have varied in size from a few hundred to almost 800. Local population is usually 50-65% of the attendees. Local population includes those who are within 5 hours driving distance one-way (do not need to fly to the venue). So use this as initial “tentative” guidance to plan for the event size.

Event Format

Typically Sammelan happens in July but not coinciding with 4th July (to avoid high air ticket prices). Event runs from riday evening to Sunday morning. You could arrange options for paid tours for visitors coming 2 days early or staying over 2 more days so that visitors can make it a vacation.

Cost Structure

By far the 2 single biggest expenditures will be Venue and Food each of which may turn out to be 35-40% each of your total overall budget (i.e. together they may account for 65-80% of your overall budget). Explore some catering options to get an idea of the pricing but you dont need to have this fully nailed down until after the Venue is finalized.
KOJAIN also provides $10,000 upfront to help with paying deposits for Venues. This amount can be returned to KOJAIN if the event turns out to be positive cash flow.

Venue

The single most important factor in coming up with even a sketch of the proposal is finding options for the venue. Depending on your Event Size you will need to find a venue that has the following facilities, typically these are large Hotel chains. Evaluate and compare multiple venues against each other, compare pricing/appearance/facilities/location, etc. For now assume Total Attendee size to be 500 to suggest the following numbers:

  • 1 large hall (generally referred to as Ball Room) with a stage that can accommodate ALL of your attendees (think opening session, night cultural programs)
  • Dining area that can accommodate at least 70% of the attendees at a time
  • Allows outside Indian caterer to cater food (may be additional fees to negotiate)
  • Kitchen that can be used by a caterer. Kitchen should have cooking and prepping space, refrigerators, freezers, (optionally) Tandoor, etc.
  • 4-6 rooms of varying sizes from 30 to 80 people for Programming Sessions
  • 1 Storage room to store your inventory
  • (nice to have) 1 Break Room of to serve refreshments during afternoon or night
  • A mix of Queen and King bedrooms to accommodate 40-60% of your attendees (need to FACT CHECK from 2018)
  • AudioVideo available in each room will be nice, else you will need to hire/rent/buy from outside

Parking on premises (negotiate for Free parking if you can)
For catering of food the venues usually charge a service fee per person for each meal session (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner) with service fees increasing in that order (Breakfast cheaper than Lunch cheaper than Dinner). They will also charge for conference rooms usage but that can be negotiated down to a very minimal amount. Negotiate HARD, this is the single biggest source of cost saving you can make upfront!! Usually can be anywhere from 10-40% reduction based on varying factors. Include some of these in your negotiation – free parking, discount code with big savings in room rates from list prices. Negotiators on your side need to have patience and the willingness to make 3-4-5-6 visits to the venue to keep negotiating with them and create a good rapport with the hotel manager, a good connection will come in handy on the event days 🙂.

Food

People love food, this is the single most thing that makes families happy! However locking the venue details is more important than locking in Food details while making a decision to Host the sammelan, as you have more time to finalize vendors and menu. Take help from KOJAIN BOD to get samples from past Sammelan menus. Mix traditional and fusion cuisine, cater to all age groups, cater to Regular strict-Jain and Vegan diets, do your best to make this a memorable experience for attendees!

Other Expenses

There will be several other categories that will make up the remaining 1/3rd of your spending budget. Some of these are self-explanatory items. This includes but is not limited to:

  • Audio/Video
  • Banners
  • Decorations
  • Entertainment (artists, materials, costume rentals, etc)
  • Event Insurance
  • (optional) Plaques/Medals to Dignitaries, Sponsors, Volunteers
  • (optional) Registration (badges, welcome goodies in a bag etc)
  • Souvenir Book printing
  • Program Tracks (speaker fees, materials, etc)
  • (optional) Tours for Visitors (if any paid tours etc)

Accounting

Please discuss this with KOJAIN BOD.
KOJAIN is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Donations made to KOJAIN are tax-deductible to the extent permissible by law. When raising sponsorships donors typically ask for tax-deduction receipt. You can work with KOJAIN BOD and Treasurer to channel donations to KOJAIN. Then use expense receipts to claim expenses against this amount.
Alternatively if you already have a Kutchi non-profit entity registered for your region then you can potentially use that entity for all incoming and outgoing expenses.
No matter what approach you choose make sure that Core Team tracks and keeps receipts for all expenses incurred to finalize the account for Sammelan. You will also need to file reimbursement forms and submit receipts along with it.

Registration Pricing

It is not uncommon to include multiple pricing tiers (Early Bird, Discount & Regular rates) or Age-based tiers. This accounts for about 40-50% of overall Inflow of dollars. Take some time to create your pricing plan for registration cost and a forecast of Inflow. Some examples of pricing tiers would be:
KOJAIN Membership Discount:

  • KOJAIN member discount within each of the different Pricing Tiers

Pricing Tiers

  • Early Bird : run for 4-8 weeks (expect 70-80% RSVP in this period)
  • Discount : 4 weeks, 20% higher cost than prev tier (expect 10-15% RSVP)
  • Regular : till event date, 20% higher cost than prev tier (expect 10-15% RSVP)

Age-Based Tiers:

  • 10 yrs and older (or age that caterer treats as full price)
  • 5-9 yrs at 60-80% discount with prev tier (age caterer treats as discounted price)
  • Under 5 yrs could be Free (age caterer treats as Free)

Sponsorships

By far the largest share of Inflow is via generous Sponsorship from KOJAIN members (and to a lesser extent any non-KOJAIN businesses). Sponsorships can account for 50-60% of overall Inflow, with the remaining coming from Registrations. Connect with potential sponsors even before the Registration details are published to the community. Spend time leveraging your contacts in KOJAIN and take help where needed. Some types of sponsorships are described below.

Named Sponsor Levels:

  • Grand, Diamond, Gold, Silver, etc. You can take more than one sponsor at each level depending on your needs and benefits given to them.

Event-based Sponsors:

  • Sponsor for Each meal session (and multiple sponsors per meal OK), and with increasing amount from Breakfast->Lunch->Dinner. Dinner attracts more sponsors.
  • Entertainment event(s)
  • Souvenir book advertisements
  • Any other event

Many people make smaller direct donations as well out of their generosity. This is always welcome!

Speakers & Program Tracks

Find Keynote speakers or dignitaries for the Opening session. This can include scholars, dignitaries, philanthropists, sports person, etc and can be a mix of Kutchi and non-Kutchi persons.

Saturday is typically devoted to various Programming Tracks that run anywhere from 45 mins to 2 hours each. Try to create anywhere from 2-4 parallel tracks at a time that cater to different genders, age, professions, etc. Depending on the number of Kids signed up include track(s) that will keep them engaged. Session presenters can be paid, voluntary or even include a KOJAIN sammelan attendee.

It is a good idea to announce at least one name when registration sign-up opens up and keep adding and announcing names as more names are signed up. Some names can help attract more attendees.

Teams & Volunteers

It suffices to say that a Sammelan cannot be organized without Volunteers who are the key foundation of your execution in the final stretch reading up to and on the days of the event.

You will need to create multiple teams focused on smaller execution pieces for the event. Create opportunities to get people to sign up to be a volunteer in areas that interest them and in several cases it is OK for a key volunteer to lead a team (Core Team member does not have to lead every team). Most volunteers are from within the Host region but possible that sometimes those from outside the Host region may also be included.

Smaller Committees for execution

Always a good idea to form smaller teams focused on certain areas so that they can run independently and have the autonomy to take care of execution while keeping the Core Team in the loop. A committee can include people from Core Team or Volunteers. People can be part of more than one committee. Some suggested committees:

  • Core Team (already covered)
  • Finance/Accounting
  • Fund Raising
  • Food
  • Website Hosting
  • Online Registration
  • Event Hospitality & Onsite Registration Desk
  • Souvenir Book
  • Decorations
  • Entertainment
  • Events & Program Tracks
  • Audio/Video
  • Transportation (to-from Hotel or Tours)

Souvenir Book

Although it may seem that this may be Optional it should actually be considered mandatory. Souvenir Book allows publishing content not only from you but also from the whole community. Invite the whole community to send articles to publish here (memoirs, poems, Jain philosophy, fun, etc). Advertising space in Souvenir Book would usually more than make up the cost of creating and printing one. Premium can be charged for Front and Back cover advertisement, inside back cover, centerfold, etc. Allow full and half page advertisements. Target sponsors include both KOJAIN community members as well as local/national businesses.

Other Documents for Reference:

  • 9th KOJAIN Sammelan Summary from 2018 : Bay Area sammelan team from 2018 has given KOJAIN a summary of their experience with hosting 9th Sammelan. This documents their journey, takeaways as well as actual numbers from the event. Ask KOJAIN BOD for a copy if interested.
  • 8th KOJAIN Sammelan Summary from 2016
No Date Theme Place Lead Team
9. July 13-15 2018 Kutch Jo Dhabkaar, Valley Jo Rankaar Marriott, San Mateo, CA Bhavini Gada (Bada), Jaideep Shah (Navavas), Jayesh Gada (Bada), Madhavi Khona (Jakhau), Navin Dedhia (Bidada), Nitul Haria (Devpur), Prashant Shah (Naredi), Shilpa Gogri (Koday), Vijay Chheda (Kundrodi)
8. July 15-17 2016 Kutchdo Baare Maas Sheraton, Parsippany, NJ Manilal Savla (Mota Asambia ), Kaushik Shah (Ramania), Haresh Shah (Bhujpur), Shailesh  Gala (Kotdi Mahadevpuri ), Pulin Visaria (Godhra), Deepak Gada (Mota Asambia)
7. Jul 27-29, 2012 Rangeelo Kachchh Holiday Inn. Rolling Meadows, Chicago, IL Mayur M. Gangar, Morton Grove, IL ( Nagalpur)
6. Aug 1–3, 2008 Anmol Kachchh Holiday Inn, Southgate  (Detroit Area), MI Arvin V. Shah, Orchard Lake, MI, (Vandh)
5. Jul 14-16 2006 Colors of Kachchh Sheraton, Reston, Virginia – Washington D. C. Area Suchita S. Gala, Vienna, VA (Village: Kandagra), Paulomi Shah (Gudka), Lexington, MA (Gudka) Sachin T. Visaria, Edison, NJ, (Bada)
4. July 28–30, 2000 Hilton, Cherry Hill, NJ Dinesh K. Chheda, Parsippany, NJ (Nalia) Tansukh U. Maru, Hazlet, NJ (Bidada)
3. Dec 26–29, 1996 Ramada Inn, Houston, TX Dhirajlal M. Gosar, Sugarland, TX (Mapar)
Laxmichand Meisheri, Plano, TX (Jakhau)
Hasmukh P. Shah, Houston, TX (Naredi)
2. July 1–4, 1994 Toronto, Canada Lata and Motilal Champsee, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada ( Undoth)
1. Sept 1– 3, 1990 Sidhdhachalam, Blairstown, NJ Tansukh U. Maru, Hazlet, NJ (Bidada)