Meeting Planning Company Washington, DC | The Fain Group

Meeting Management

The Fain Group is a respected full-service meetings management company that understands how to create unforgettable and successful meetings. From the early planning stage to on-site management, our meetings professionals provide the highest quality guidance and insight to ease your workload and to ensure a superior meeting.

Planning & Management

The Fain Group is expert in the production of executive-level board meetings, annual conferences, training workshops, product rollouts and continuing-education seminars. We specialize in the strategic management of meetings no matter the locale, whether in traditional hotels and convention centers or non-traditional venues such as theme parks, cruise ships and sports facilities.

Our professional staff excels in laying the foundational elements of meetings management: logistics planning, registration, speaker management, sponsor and exhibit sales, website development, marketing materials and on-site management.

Identified as a leader in the field, the Fain Group coordinates and manages all accommodations, room sets and banquet event orders with the hotel or venue. All food and beverage functions are designed within the client’s budget in mind—and are, of course, approved by the client.

We plan for audio-visual and multi-media presentations, overseeing the delivery of equipment and services for installation, such as computers, projectors, fax machines, copiers, Internet and telephone lines and electrical drops. Additionally, we prepare appropriate directional and informational signage, arrange language interpretation, if needed, and assess access for people with disabilities prior to arriving on-site.

The Fain Group respects the investment you make in your meeting, and we support you at every turn to guarantee your meeting is profitable and achieves your goals. We also offer program management and conference development to advance and enhance the content knowledge of our clients.

Site Selection & Contract Negotiation

The Fain Group is recognized for its exhaustive efforts to find appropriate situations and sites for every meeting, event and accommodation. We develop and disseminate a sophisticated request for proposal (RFP) and perform an in-depth search for appropriate, cost-effective sites.

We bring a broad knowledge of site management to the process of reviewing site offers, and we are expert at compiling and analyzing the results. Finally we outline the pros and cons to our clients to allow them to make an informed decision. Once a site has been selected, we confidently and effectively negotiate on behalf of our clients, taking into account their meetings’ unique financial and content requirements.

Attendee Registration

The Fain Group is able to manage your registration needs whether your meeting requires online registration or if attendees are required to fax or mail their registrations. Our efficient staff will administer all registration details, including answering attendee questions, sending confirmations, processing payments and refunds, providing registration and reconciliation reports, updating meeting registration sites and formatting name badges. The Fain Group is able to accommodate all aspects and complexities of registration once on site, all within the parameters of our client’s specifications and requirements.

For more detailed information about our online registration capabilities, see how we create Online Registration Systems.

Committee & Planning Meetings

The Fain Group has a knack for working with committees, because we know when to listen and when to lead. Our professional staff is comprised of experienced meetings managers who have worked with corporations and non-profit organizations. Each has the ability to set up committee calls, take minutes as needed, brainstorm with team members, guide discussions, if needed, keep groups on track and make the time spent in the planning stage meaningful and useful. We are keen to work collaboratively to establish the goals and objectives of your conferences and events.

Financial Management

The Fain Group is ever mindful of our client’s budget considerations, and we have a proven track record of meeting client financial objectives. We work with you to set realistic projections, and then we aggressively monitor them throughout our partnership to ensure they’re met.

One of the advantages of working with such an experienced team is our ability to engage our experience in contract negotiations to benefit our clients by reducing rates. Wise decision-making and leveraging vendor and hotelier relationships, which have been built up over the life of our business, provide enormous benefits to our clients.

At the completion of each meeting or event, the Fain Group provides reconciliation reports and a thorough review of hotel and vendor bills, which are submitted in a timely manner for you to meet internal accounting timelines.

On-Site Management

The Fain Group employs the most skilled cadre of meeting professionals currently working in the field. Our goal is to make the on-site meeting experience seamless. By verifying that all arrangements are in place, anticipating probable challenges, double checking each event in advance and maintaining agile communication with on-site management and service staff, The Fain Group ensures a superior meeting experience.

Registration – The Fain Group takes the hassle out of registration by employing time-proven procedures to streamline the process and keep the focus on the welcomed attendee. We take our role here seriously, as this may be the first experience many of the attendees, speakers and exhibitors will have with your organization.

Behind the scenes, you can count on us to lead pre-conference meetings, manage the logistics, assist in the staff-office set-up, oversee the arrival and delivery of shipments and conduct all briefings with vendors and suppliers. We carefully monitor the attendee counts and provide updates that will likely affect the guarantees made to your suppliers.

While on site, we verify accurate meeting room sets, confirm and check the placement and working condition of audio-visual equipment, supervise the food and beverage functions, oversee the transportation and review all invoices at the end of each day.

Exhibit Hall – The exhibit hall is another public face of the meeting and the organization, so exhibitor and attendee satisfaction is paramount. Our knowledgeable exhibit hall staff oversees the service and information desks, promotes future booth sales for later conferences, and manages the food and beverage service and special offerings in the hall (bookstore, demonstrations, lectures, etc.).

From set-up through tear down, The Fain Group is an authority at managing the demands of the exhibit hall. Working closely with the general service contractor, we oversee the placement of signage and enforce policies and procedures, making the exhibit hall a welcoming and useful addition to your meeting.

Speaker and Panelist Coordination

The Fain Group works with you to recruit and coordinate speakers throughout the meeting or event planning cycle. Our work can begin with the initial invitation letter or call for papers and can conclude with the payment of honoraria or tabulation of speaker evaluation data. We monitor critical deadlines on your behalf, obtaining the speaker’s important audio-visual needs and acquiring information that is essential for producing the final conference materials.

Our database experts can track the speakers’ registration information, produce name badges and highlight special documents to be included in the speakers’ packets at registration. Once on site, this segmentation will allow them to be recognized at registration, given updates, briefed about media interviews or led to the speaker-ready room. For VIPs, arrival and departure times can be tracked, airport transportation secured, security details arranged and rehearsal time set for their presentations.

Transportation Services

We know transportation, whether it’s VIP airport pick-up service, transportation to an off-site event or a complex shuttle bus schedule to multiple hotels and destinations. The Fain Group is expert in developing a thorough, defined strategy to efficiently coordinate our clients’ transportation needs. We have years of experience managing transportation services in hectic cities as well as transportation-challenged suburban areas and isolated rural locales. That knowledge allows us to choose our transportation partners wisely, always based on our client’s transportation service needs.