Coordinating an award ceremony or a presentation event can be a rewarding, if challenging, task. An award ceremony can be part of a dinner or other meeting, or a standalone event, formal or a more relaxed gathering. The benefits of marking your members’ achievements, qualifications and completions are evident: you are recognising local talent and progression, bringing together like-minded achievers, demonstrating the strength of the local profession, and hopefully building foundations for future recruits to your institute council.

No: social events should be self-funding. This can be from sponsorship from local organisations, in exchange for promotion and advertising, and/or by charging a suitable price for tickets for the event.

Institutes often have established social and networking events which they run annually and benefit from regular support and a reputation built over time. Events include annual golf days, annual quiz, treasure hunt, summer ball or barbecue, pool tournament, wine-tasting, fashion show and five-a-side football tournament.

At many dinners a charity draw will take place where sponsors have been involved and this will normally take the form of a raffle. In this case each of the sponsors should be acknowledged before the raffle takes place. Some institutes vary the method of fundraising to add interest with envelope raffles, silent auctions and games of heads-or-tails.

Suitable and appropriate guest speakers can contribute to the success of a dinner. Word of mouth is invaluable - talk to your fellow institutes and your RMM for information on speakers who have been a success - or a failure. Contact details for speaker agencies can be found on the Speakers List. In recent years local institutes have tended to move away from the traditional 'comedian' to speakers such as their charity representative, motivational or inspirational speakers, historians or people well-known to the local community. Or no speaker at all! Don't be afraid to think outside the box and ensure your dinner is modern and relevant!

You make a request for a CII representative at your dinner via your Annual Dinner return. CII Secretariat will then allocate a CII representative and advise accordingly. You are not obliged to have a CII representative, it's up to you, and if you do, you can work with them to ensure their contribution complements your running order.

The host president is ‘Chairman’ for the night and therefore sits in the middle of the top table. Guests should then be seated according to their status alternately on the right of the president, when facing the body of the room, and then on the left.