Diwali in a housing society is rarely one event. It is a rangoli competition, common-area lighting, a fireworks evening for the children, sweets for every flat, and usually a cultural night. Five sub-events, five sets of expenses, and — if you are not careful — five separate people asking residents for money.
Collect once, allocate internally
Residents do not mind paying. They mind being asked four times. Collect a single Diwali contribution and allocate it across the sub-events in your own books. Your neighbours experience one clean request; your committee still gets a per-event breakdown at the end.
Or move to a yearly fund entirely
If your society celebrates Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri and Diwali, you are running the same collection drive three times a year — and chasing the same slow payers three times. A single annual contribution pools once and funds every festival from it, with each celebration drawing down against the pool.
It is not right for everyone. Societies that collect ad-hoc, or where participation varies a lot by festival, are usually better off per-festival. The comparison is worth making deliberately rather than by inertia.
Watch the categories that repeat
Lighting and decoration recur every single year, and are usually the two lines that quietly inflate. Tracking them as consistent categories means that next Diwali you can open last Diwali and see exactly what the same work cost — which is the strongest negotiating position a committee can walk into a vendor meeting with.