What is CiviEvent?

CiviCRM's CiviEvent module centralizes your registration data process, lets your constituents register themselves (including such conveniences as paying online with credit cards), and even gives people live access to your data while onsite at the event.

CiviEvent is integrated with CiviCRM's other modules, so you can send a targeted email to the list of participants, or to specific subsets such as the ones who have a volunteer role but cancelled attendance. Moreover, each registration is added to the list of activities for the contact, letting you see for instance that Mr Doe registered 15 hours after having received your monthly newsletter.

Scenario: recruiting for an annual youth leadership workshop

Organizations have many ways to take advantage of CiviEvent to lighten the task load when planning and managing events. Here is a scenario of how an organization is using CiviEvent.

A community organizing group holds leadership workshops for youths 25 and younger as their major yearly event.  They invite youth speakers and volunteers, as well as several other speakers for the training workshops. The organization also charges nominal fees for meals and lodging, a flat fee for the registration fee, and additional costs for optional workshops. Information is collected beforehand about the participants' food and lodging preferences. The event invitation is usually sent to a targeted audience contact list to ensure that the organisation's core constituency attends, and the event is also announced more broadly by posting it on the website to allow for online registrations. At the end of the event, staff want to evaluate the success of the event and report results such as number of attendees, total event fees paid, and total amount still due.

To prepare for the event, the organization plans their data needs and the tasks needed to configure the event as well as to keep tabs on the registration and event management process. Here are some items that the organization plans to do in preparation for the day of the event:

• Organizers will build their targeted list of people they want to invite to the event.
• A staff person will set up the website to show the event.
• A staff person will decide and configure the pricing for the different event fees: registration fee; cost for the meals; cost for lodging; costs for optional workshops.
• A staff person will configure CiviEvent to collect information about participants' food and lodging preferences.
• A staff person will set up an event template and email message template that can be used every year in order to ease the process of setting up similar events over time.
• During the event registration process, a staff person will manage the process by which participants register themselves, periodically checking to make sure that payments are being made, and managing the wait list when they exceed their maximum number of participants.
• During the day of the event, organizers will check in each attendee on-site to keep track of who's actually attending and who is a no-show.  This will also help determine at the end of the event who has paid and who still owes fees.
  
• After the event, the Director will create reports about the number of attendees, and event details such as total fees received as part of a report to give the organization's funders.