As more organizations strive to develop multi-faceted relationships with their customers and other publics, events have emerged as an excellent conduit. Top management associates the development and management of special events almost exclusively with PR.

As more sponsorship money flows into events, top management is taking a greater interest in the area and posing the question, "What did we get in return for the dollars invested?" Increased sales would certainly be a welcomed reply, and many events are implemented to achieve this objective. But there are many kinds of events and many objectives in addition to sales. This paper will present an overview of the field and several methods for evaluating events.

Currently only a small proportion of PR organizations measure the events they produce. An often-cited reason is that most PR people simply do not know how to go about it. In this paper we attack the problem head-on by presenting a detailed discussion of research tools available for developing events and evaluating their impact. These research tools are appropriate for both large and small organizations, and for large and small evaluation budgets.

It is vital that PR executives take up the challenge of evaluating their events for three reasons: (1) everyone needs to be accountable for the wise use of the resources made available to them; (2) evaluation can help develop and implement better events; and (3) measurement can help maintain and grow PR budgets.

This paper addresses two audiences: PR leadership who will be requesting and reviewing the results of evaluations, and staff members doing the actual assessment.