Regardless of whether your organization has many small events, or a few large ones, you know the work involved with inviting, organizing, contribution, and tracking can become a full time job. Complicate this picture with today's preference for online payment, and you have a major technology challenge to add to your tasks.
Patriot was created to give you a rich set of event management and fundraising tools so you can focus on the actual event, rather than getting buried in the details. From our online registration forms, to the task based management system, Patriot is an extremely efficient system and can remove a tremendous amount of the "busy work" from those events.
Here are a few ways that our online event management system can help:
- Online registration and RSVP system
- Accept all major credit cards for event related fees
- Have multiple fee options for your events
- Have member only options for event fees
- Track goals and attendance vacancies
- Export your RSVP list for use at the door
- Task management and volunteer assignment
Online event registration system
Our system generates a unique sign-up page for each event, so you can easily add it to your existing website. Each registration form also contains all of the event details as well as quite a few optional fields to allow for extra donations or notes. Most of the time you will use the standard fields such as the location, coordinators, times, date, and so on. By letting people fill out their own registration form, you eliminate your need to re-key their information and save time while simultaneously increasing accuracy. Also, when attendees would like to bring additional guests, they can complete their information as well. This method of data entry keeps your database accurate and allows you to easily follow-up with the guests.
Accept credit cards or just RSVP for event registration
Our forms accept all major credit cards, but they also support free events where you simply need help with head-count. Also, if you have people that are paying by check, cash, or "in-kind", you can also track them inside of Patriot, so your guest lists will always be accurate. The RSVP form does not ask for credit card information unless you have indicated you would like to provide for an additional donation, even though the event may be free. This is an excellent method of
Multiple fee options for a single event
If you have several payment options, our event management system can handle that situation by showing them the available fees. For example, if you are having a golf fundraiser and want to offer several options, you might end up with something like this:
- $100 - Dinner Only
- $120 - Golf Only
- $200 - Golf & Dinner
People can then choose the option they prefer and the fee will be adjusted accordingly.
Members only fee options
We also support “members-only” pricing, so if you are using our membership module this will give you the ability to offer a "members only price". If one of these special options is selected, the user will be verified against your membership database and will not be permitted to use that pricing if they are not actually a member or haven't paid their dues.
Vacancies, fundraising goals, and overflow
If you have a limited number of seats that are available, you can set a limit for sign-up capabilities and only allow a specific number of attendees. Or, you can optionally allow for an overflow list to be created that you can use to fill unexpected vacancies. Our system shows you the number of RSVPs for all of your events on the main screen, so you know at-a-glance if you are on track to meet the fundraising goal.
Exporting event attendee and door lists
When the time for your event is at hand, Patriot can export the list of those who have paid or sent an RSVP into to Excel so you can monitor the door with this list in-hand. Tracking attendance is a critical step in developing a donor strategy, because of the high percentage of contributors that donate repeatedly. By using a paper list at the event you can simply check-off the people you greet, and later update Patriot so you have an accurate history of attendance.
Task management and to-do lists
Unlike other event management systems, Patriot is setup to help you organize the actual event tasks. You can create as many items in your task list as you require and also indicate the number of volunteers required for those items. Optionally a "reminder date" can be set that will email you and the task owner if the item has not been completed by the date specified.
Volunteers can take ownership of tasks
To further increase the effectiveness of event management, you can allow volunteers to take ownership of any of the tasks you have created. Each approved volunteer can see the lists of unclaimed tasks for upcoming events. They can then apply to the event coordinator to claim ownership of those items. However, the coordinator has the final say and can accept or decline their offer for help. Volunteers can indicate when the task is finished and optionally input the total hours they took to complete it.
By giving you all of these rich tools, we hope that it will help you to stay focused on the big picture while letting the system handle the details.