I was asked to be a race director for a fairly sizeable race today. However, they told me to name a price and I have no idea what fair compensation is for a race director (and neither do they).
They project the race will have around 1000-2000 participants. 5k distance.
Anyone know what average RD pay is?? They said they are willing to go base pay + commission.
please advise...
You could 3 methods:
Project hourly investment x an hourly wage. I volunteer my RD a duties but I usually spend 10 hours a week for 25 weeks; so 250 hours times whatever you might charge. That could be 5-10k.
Charge a portion of the revenue.
If they charge $50 a person that's 50k. You could charge 5-10%.
If it's cost competitive then you need to ask around to find the going rate. Maybe you need to be at 3% revenue to get the job. If that's the case you'll need to find ways to be efficient with that fee in order to remain profitable.
I've heard Dave McGillivray advise professional RDs to charge 20% of the race's budget. For you, assuming this race has 1500 participants at $30/each ($45,000 in revenue) and nets $10,000 ($35,000 budget), that would mean quoting $7,000 (20% of $35,000).
For Dave, though, I assume that 20% figure includes some pass-through expenses (staffing) as well as some additional services (infrastructure rental) so, his net is substantially less than that 20% number. I'm assuming you're not providing staffing and infrastructure, so you should probably be closer to half that number (10% of budget, or $3500).
And then there's the fact that you're a first-time RD (right?), which probably means you shouldn't be charging top-of-market (same as Dave McGillivray!) rates. So knock off a thousand bucks and you're at $2500. To me, that seems about right.
One thing I would advise is to be careful about accepting too much of a commission-based pay scale--if you're not responsible for marketing the event (and even if you are), a lot of the race's registration growth is out of your control. But if you're responsible for the nuts and bolts of the race then you're putting in the time and energy whether the race grows or not. If you are responsible for marketing and growing the event, pay for that should be in addition to pay for doing the nuts and bolts work (permitting, managing vendors, site and course planning, race weekend logistics and race day OPS, etc).
$2000 + $0.50/entrant