[376sixer]

Hi,

Does anyone have any best practices for tracking large events,400+ attendees, and seating practices w/out using the Events module? Due to our constituency being largely contact relationships the Events Module doesn't work so well for tracking without the entire staff wanting to create individual records for every contact. That just leads to data intergity problems outside of events.

Please HELP!!!!!

[Elaine Tucker]

I know you said you wanted to use something outside the event module, but If you have it why not try this?

Have the invitee be the Organization
Guests = all the invitees ( I think you can import them from a list even if they are not a constituent) and then use the seating chart in Event to seat them.

I'm thinking off the very top of my head, and have not actually done this in real life.

Helpful at all?

[Matthew]

i'm sorry, but i can't resist adding that this is yet another reason why it's better to have a policy of starting with full constituent records instead of trying to maintain everything in short relationship records. you've paid for another module - not cheap - and you can't use it.

[Melissa Siobhan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matthew

i'm sorry, but i can't resist adding that this is yet another reason why it's better to have a policy of starting with full constituent records instead of trying to maintain everything in short relationship records. you've paid for another module - not cheap - and you can't use it.

I disagree. There is absolutely no reason to not allow an organization to send guests that never become constituents in your database or even are relationships to that org.

Would it be better if you could link relationsups top registrations? Yes, but in lieu of that I do not want 600 constituents created in my database who will likely never have any other contact except maybe to come to next year's event.

If you believe them to be an individual prospect for a gift - yes, create a record so they can be screened for capacity, mailed to, etc. But not everyone who attends an event needs that - which is likely why BB did not require a participant to be a constituent.

I agree with Elaine - just because there are limitations to the event module is no reaon not to use it. When we have events similar to yours we create a participant record for the company but mark them as do not register and do not seat (the org). Then we add the individuals coming as guests to that record and mark them as registered and seat them. It works well - just takes some forethought.

[Peter Gulka]

To add to the fray - the time and effort you are going to spend kluging
something together will result in a staff expense of probably equivalent to
the cost of the Event module.


Food for thought

[Beth Grierson]

We kept track of a 800-1,000 seat dinner with an excel spreadsheet for 5 years. On that sheet, we tracked
-everyone who paid for a ticket or a sponsorship and whether or not they were attending
-alll guests, and who paid for their ticket
-their seating group
-their table number

We used the spreadsheet to determine table arrangments, create name tags, and registration lists.

The obvious downside is that we had to do a bunch of c-n-p afterwards to record some of that info in people's records, but creating, adding and tracking information in the spreadsheet prior to the even was FAR simpler and more effiecient.

I'd call it a wash, myself.