Why does our service cost what it costs?
We know that things are incredibly tough for event organisers at the moment, and many are having to make difficult calls about what services to have on-site. Drug checking isn’t cheap, and event organisers are always asking us why our service costs what it costs.
We operate on a mixture of public funding, donations, grants and fundraising, and charges to commercial events.
This page explains how we justify our charges to attend events.
We improve safety and reduce risk for your event
We want the same thing as every festival organiser – a stress-free, enjoyable event where everyone gets home safely.
We worked hard to become the world’s first legal drug checking service. Now we work to help people understand the risks and benefits of drugs, make safer choices, and look out for each other. That means less harm from drugs, an easier time for your medics and welfare staff, and less stress for you.
Patrons can tell if events are looking out for their welfare, and they’re more likely to come back and bring their friends if they know there are support services on hand. Local authorities and Police will also be happier to see the event return in following years.
Our Costs
We’re a mostly volunteer charity with some paid staff. We began as a grassroots team who spent the first few years paying for this ourselves, so we’re in the habit of not spending money.
Our direct costs for an event include:
- Paying our Event Leads an hourly rate;
- Travel and transporting equipment;
- Consumables for every test (reagents, cleaning supplies, gloves, etc);
- Snacks for volunteers on shift
Our quotes to event organisers include a required number of volunteer tickets for our crew. We need to bring a decent-sized crew because:
- It takes 2 – 3 people per spectrometer to process samples; and
- We sit down with clients for in-depth conversations, answer their questions, and give them knowledge to reduce their risks
Our volunteers gift their time at events in return for a free ticket. Our service works because our volunteers are participants, and have trust and respect from festival attendees because we are part of the community.
Our volunteers will have 10 – 12 hours of training and many more hours volunteering at local clinics before joining us at your event. In 2024 we ran over 70 training sessions to ensure that the team at your event are prepared and knowledgeable.
Our indirect costs for an event include:
- Purchasing and maintaining spectrometers;
- Laptops, tablets, tents, tables, power supplies and other infrastructure;
- Mobile internet / Starlink;
- Insurance;
- Printing handouts and other harm reduction materials
We turn up to your event with a portable lab made up of the best technology available for mobile drug analysis – at a large event we will have well over a quarter of a million dollars worth of equipment. Just the insurance on each spectrometer alone costs us hundreds of dollars per month.
We have significant costs just to exist.
We are a licensed service in a complex environment. Our drug checking application took us months to prepare – forty plus pages of application, nineteen supporting documents, conviction records, and more.
The cost to keep our license is significant and includes things such as:
- Multiple government audits every year;
- Meeting stringent reporting and data quality requirements ;
- Participating in mandatory working groups to improve drug checking in NZ;
- Participating in the early-warning system for new or harmful drugs;
- Rigorous applications to trial new testing techniques
We are arguably one of the most heavily audited and regulated health services.
We also run the most-followed drug information website and social media account in Aotearoa. We’re often called by the media to comment on drug issues, and use that as an opportunity to promote a responsible harm reduction approach in the media.
All of this takes staff time – we run off two permanent staff and about twenty part-time contractors, covering regional teams, volunteer management, government relations, media, communications, data, training, and administration. This includes all the other boring stuff to keep the organisation functioning – such as paying our bills, maintaining our databases, and running our website.
Our Income
We rely on a variety of income sources to support our operations and advocacy work.
Public funding & grants
The majority of our income comes from public funding. With this funding we run over 140 free city clinics per year and keep our 500+ volunteers trained and engaged.
We have negotiated with the government that we can use public funding to subsidise festival costs. Reducing the chance that your patrons will need publicly-funded healthcare is a win for everyone. Each quote has a public funding discount factored into it.
We use every opportunity to make the case to the government that our service is a worthwhile investment of funds into public health. But our funding is insecure and never enough to cover our operations.
Charges to events
Patrons at ticketed events benefit from the services those events provide, so we ask festivals to pay for our services. This is calculated roughly as our direct costs, plus a margin to contribute to our indirect costs, minus our public funding discount.
We try to balance our costs to serve your event with the reality that festivals in NZ are always going to be tight on funds, and we have a commitment to provide our service to everyone in Aotearoa, not just the people who attend festivals.
Donations
Generous donors and off-season fundraising supplement our budget, but only covers a small amount of our overall costs.
How do we make our services affordable to your event?
We try to keep our service affordable, which means trying to keep our price under a dollar per patron for each event. There’s some flexibility on that, reflecting the nature of our costs.
There may be the potential for grant funds in your region to support drug checking at your event or in advance of your event. We may be able to help connect you to funders and assist you with applications, so please get in touch (the sooner the better).
What makes an event cheaper for us to attend?
With bigger events comes some economies of scale, mostly around staff time. We generally charge less per attendee, while smaller events can be more expensive per patron. Other factors include the size of the team we need to bring and how far we need to travel.
If you’re doing a good job on welfare for your patrons, such as having other welfare services on-site and promoting responsible consumption, we can turn up with a smaller team and thus lower costs.
We’ve recently launched some new partnership options which can make our services more affordable, including multiple-booking discounts. If you’re interested to discuss, please contact info@knowyourstuff.nz for a chat.