Using EventForm in Non-Profits

Organizing different types of events for your non-profit setting requires meticulous planning and effective communication. Regardless of the field your non-profit operates in, event registration is a constant need for events like:

• Galas and Banquets

• Walk/Run Fundraisers 

• Tournaments

• Auctions

• Conferences, Workshops or Seminars

• Festivals

• Volunteer Days

• Open Houses or other Social Events

• Awards Ceremonies

• Celebrations

Handling event registration well can help make sure that your event is well attended, runs smoothly, and boosts engagement and communication levels. In this article, we'll explore how you can leverage free and familiar Google Apps to streamline your event registration and management. Then we'll go even further by using them in conjunction with EventForm by adding features like a dedicated event website, automatic reminder emails, and much more. The article will be broken up into each step of your event’s lifecycle to show how to take advantage of EventForm’s features at every step.

Setup Your Google Form for Registration

Setup your event in a few minutes by creating a registration form with Google Forms. Google Forms is the building block for everything connected to your event, and Google Forms has many advanced features you can take advantage of. 

Not sure how to use Google Forms for event registration? No problem. Take a look at our popular, step-by-step article to learn more: Using Google Forms for Event Registration. Once your Form is ready, come back to this article.

Setup Your Event's Webpage

After creating a customized Google Form with registration questions for your guests, launch EventForm and provide information about your event in order to quickly set up an event webpage (no coding experience required). 

Steps:

• If you haven’t already installed EventForm in your Google Account, install it quickly using these steps.

• Open EventForm and create your event following these instructions.

• During event creation, customize your event webpage with a custom theme, title, description, event location (with an online option) and an embedded video.

  • The online option is perfect for webinars, and allows the option of including instructions and following up with a Zoom link. 

  • An embedded video can be a great high impact addition to give your audience more information before an event. Whether it be a class or club meeting, the video can be a great way to send your students any prerequisite information and make sure they are ready to learn.

• Note the “Share Event” button. Clicking this will generate a link for your event's website that you can send out via email, post on your social media pages, or your organization's website.

Communicate with Attendees:

After creating your event webpage, take advantage of EventForm’s integration with Gmail and Google Calendar to keep attendees engaged, informed, and excited about the event. Following the registration email, they will receive an invitation to your event via Google Calendar. This keeps them engaged and reminded of your event. 

The next few EventForm features can be found in the “Settings” tab of EventForm. To access them, open EventForm following these instructions and navigate to the “Settings” tab:

• Registration Emails: Create a custom message to go out with your automated registration email. This is an effective way to communicate more information to attendees such as a more detailed agenda, or sending in the Zoom link for an event once they have registered.

• Reminder Emails: These automated reminder emails, which go out seven days and one day prior to the event, are a perfect way to remind your attendees about the event and make sure they don’t potentially miss the date due to busy schedules. This email can be customized and be used to communicate information such as a location change or new programming. 

EventForm’s Gmail and Google Calendar integrations save valuable time for event organizers by reducing the required overhead communication and increase event attendance as registered guests are reminded often of the upcoming event.

Manage Registrations: 

Once attendees start to register for your event, there will be many things to keep track of at once. EventForm’s “Overview” dashboard and “Registrations” page allow you to easily manage your registration window, guest registrations, event capacity and waitlist. EventForm also offers the options to add notes, change registration status, and impose a capacity and waitlist limit.

Steps:

• Open EventForm following these instructions, and navigate to the “Settings” and “Registrations” tabs.

  • Registrations tab can be really helpful over a long term period to keep track of attendance records and look back on event participation. 

• In the “Settings” page, you can enable a waitlist for your event, which can be helpful to allow attendees to register even though the event is full, and be moved off the waitlist if there are any cancellations.

  • The event capacity is a great tool to set a limit on your registrations, and can be paired with several other EventForm features.

    • The Registration Period feature can be used to close your event registration earlier than your event, to drive attendee urgency in signing up and give some time to see if guests will cancel and others can be moved off the waitlist.

    • Also take advantage of the “Display Number of Spots Remaining” setting to let your guests see how many spots are left so that they RSVP as early as possible.

• On the “Registrations” page, manage all your guests in real time

  • Filter or search your guests by registration status, name and email.

  • Click “Select Action” to change registration status, as well as view each guest’s registration answers in depth. Add a note for each guest which requires special accommodations.

  • You can also temporarily close and reopen registration as required, as well as export all your guest information to Google Sheets for further analysis and reporting.

Here is an example of what the registration management area looks like:

During Your Event

EventForm also continues to be helpful during your event. Keep track of attendance in real time and check your guests in.

Steps

• Open EventForm following these instructions, and navigate to the “Registrations” tab

• Check guests into your event by clicking “Select Action” next to their names and selecting “Mark as Checked In”. Use this to easily keep track of guests, this is a helpful feature to mark absences and late arrivals.

• Click ‘View Reg. Details” to double check relevant information about your guests.

• The “Add a note” button can be used to note down anything relevant about the guest, or keep track of updates like an extra guest coming with them. Dietary preferences and allergies are often a large concern for clubs or events that will have food, and this can be an easy way to keep track of this.

Post Event Follow-up:

Collect feedback about the event as well as share any relevant information and documents with your guests through a post-event email. EventForm allows you to fully customize this email and include a survey to gain feedback from all your attendees, as well as include relevant information and documents you might want to send them after your event is over.

Steps:

• Open EventForm following these instructions, and navigate to the “Settings” tab

• Find the post event email customization option and create a message that your guests will receive after the event

  • You can use this email to thank attendees for their attendance, and remind them about similar future events coming up.

  • This email can also be used to follow up with any documents or resources mentioned during your event, and can be helpful to send notes or recordings of Zoom meetings for students that may have missed the session.

  • You may also include a survey and get feedback about your event, so that you can continue to improve attendee experience and create high impact events that benefit your organization.

Conclusion

While Google Applications such as Google Forms and Google Calendar provide a great starting point for event registration, many of these apps are difficult to connect together and aren’t specialized for event management. EventForm expands on many of the Google Apps and their capabilities, and effortlessly fuses all their best features while offering even more customization. Use EventForm to make an impact through events in your non-profit organization, and easily manage your attendees at every phase of the process.

EventForm can be installed for free and set up in minutes! To install EventForm, click here and follow the instructions for a quick set up.  If you have any questions, please contact us at eventform-support@gleeda.net. Happy Event Management!