Alright guys.  I am hosting a tournament to benefit St. Jude's and I am blowing my mind trying to establish payout percentages.  50% of all money raised will go to St. Jude's and the other 50% will go to payout for the tournament.  We want to pay one in every five so 20% of the teams will get a check.  How do I figure these payouts percentage wise.  Any ideas?

an easy way would be to follow the breakdown of some of the larger organizations, such as http://www.abaproam.com/bwspayout.php. Add up the total payout and find the percentage to each position.

That was actually how I started out Matt but I soon found out that the percentages were not whole numbers and some went out several decimal places.  I found an online calculator for poker tournaments that has given me a pretty good guideline but it only goes to 10 places and we are expecting up to 150 boats so would payout 30 places.  I was hoping for someone on here who has some experience as a tournament director to point me to some software or a calculator program that will figure each place if I put in the number of boats and the entry fee.

Use microsoft excel if you have any expierence with it, or ask someone that you know that has expierence with it. You will be able to create a spreadsheet, insert the percentages, and create a calculator that will do everything you need. Excel is a powerful tool.

I am working on an Excel spreadsheet.  The problem I am having is determining what percentage to pay each place.  I appreciate the ideas guys and you have both suggested what I am already doing but maybe I was not clear enough in my original post.  I need to determine the percentages to pay each place not the dollar amount.  I am sure that there must be a simple formula for figuring payout percentages based on number of entries, entry amount and number of winners.  Again, thanks for the ideas and they are both good ones but I need a chart or a formula to tell me what percent I should pay to 12th place if I have 134 boats.

Usually how we split money( in poker games) is we start with the winner get the majority of winnings say 60% of the total prize then next would get half of that so second would get 30% third 10%. maybe just play around until it comes out to how ever many places you want to pay. In your case you may want to go with something like 40% 20% 10% 5% 3% and so on.

There is a program called Tournament Keeper V6. 

Google it and download the free trial.  You can list how many places you want to pay back, it will do pairings if need be, and much more.  I am using it for my tournament.  I think it will help you out also.

Thanks Jevaris...That is what I was looking for. I will download it today and hopefully that will solve the problem.

Wow I looked at the software and then followed the links to the TS series scales and leaderboards display and if you were setting up a tournament trail that would be the place to look there.

i play in larger poker tournys, some being as large as 5,000-10,000 players and from what ive seen in tournys that large first place gets about 10% but in tournys or around 200 first place get 25% if that helps any

if you give me the extimated total amount of money expected i can total it out for you, im pretty good in math, made a 97 in my trig class last semester

haha very nice with the trig, i got a 85 in it last year and i currently have a 82 in ap calc this year(its hard lol)

Thanks for the replies guys.  The Tournament Keeper software has everything handled.  Problem solved.  Thanks Jevaris for the recommendation and to the rest of you who were willing to help.