Best way to manage a private event.

[sashakanno]

Hi Community-

We are hosting a private event for our donors and are asking for a pledge / donation to attend. What's the best way to promote and organize this?

Should I create an event and send the link to donate in the invitation email? The event is being held at a private residence and they will receive the address with the pledge or donation. 

We have done this event in the past but it was not that easy to track the pledges and donations to attendees. 

Thanks in advance. 

[maxpete]

@sashakanno Thanks for your question! I'm tagging a few sellers here who have hosted or thrown private events to see what their advice might be!

@marissa_revival, @TCSlaguna, and @MudFire_Dex 

[sashakanno]

Any luck with suggestions? I need to get this posted asap as our event is a month out. 

Thanks!

[maxpete]

I'm going to check in with some more folks now. Thanks for the reminder! 

[MayaP]

Hey @sashakanno, I am happy to assist as well. 

Just to confirm, for the promotion of the event. Are you wanting to use email or texts to promote the event?

When you send the link you want them to donate and rsvp? Once they rsvp, are you needing a ticket to be sent? Or will you have a list of the people who rsvp at the at event? 

[isabelle]

@JG_Brewing you're an event guru - right!? 

[MudFire_Dex]

We use Square appointments for totally private appointments - It would be easy to generate a list that way - I know Square has a donations function as well and you could just craft an invite list from that?

[sashakanno]

ok. I'm open to suggestions. I've never used Appointments since we are a simple retail flower shop. 

Do you have any tips for me?

[MudFire_Dex · Accepted solution]

I like using Appointments because you can password protect the ability to sign up by embedding the link in a standard page (I am assuming that you are using Square online) and then the Appointment confirmation can give all of the address details, directions, etc and you can make an Appointment set to accept payment first so that you know the ticket is paid for. It would also be nice because it would make sure that those people are logged into your Customer's database for future marketing blasts/coupons/etc. They can set up an account and store a payment on file, etc. 

If you sent an invite to your donor list - they could use the private page to pay the appointment fee (in your case the donation) and the details and directions sent out would then be private (we do our new member appointments this way since we have a wait-list and don't want folks to be setting appointments who weren't on the list first). 

Require Appointment Prepayment

With Square Appointments, you can accept prepayment in full for all fixed price services when your clients book online. 

To set up prepayments:

1. Visit Customers > Appointments > Settings > Payments and Cancellations in your online Square Appointments dashboard.
2. Select Require Prepayment.
3. Add your cancellation policy > click Save.

Once client prepayment is set up for online bookings, you can also save your client’s card on file to charge for appointments created from your online Square Appointments dashboard.

Note: The maximum transaction size for prepayment is $5,000.

Learn more about Customer Prepayment for Square Appointments.

[sashakanno]

Awesome. I'll try it this way. 

Thanks so much.

[MudFire_Dex]

I didn't ask how many people but a "appointment class/event" might simplify the list for you too you'd still do the password page I know with appointments it won't let you overbook them and I hadn't asked about how many staff logins you had to use - if it doesn't work for you your idea of an event on a password page would. 🙂

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/7991-class-booking-with-square-appointments

[sashakanno]

Hi- We are expecting around 50 guests. 

[MudFire_Dex]

Hi - I'm sorry I think I misunderstood the need for privacy vs ease of contact. If only the details are private but you don't want to disclose them until after the donation you could set up a website redirect in your donations link by editing it to send the buyer to your site after purchase and just have a page that isn't in your site navigation with the details and then you could send a followup email. 

I had been under the impression that you only wanted a certain donor list to see the page - not that you have a donate page up regularly 🙂

Sorry for the confusion on my end!

[MudFire_Dex]

I took a peek at your site and I do think you could add it there - what a beautiful farm and mission 💕

[sashakanno]

Thanks!

I added it to the Donate page but it's still very clunky. If you click on the appointment it shows the whole calendar and makes suggestions for next available dates, which we don't have for this one time event. 

https://www.farmlot59.org/donate

What am I doing wrong? How can I make this better?

[MudFire_Dex]

Hi @sashakanno  I looked at the event page on your site and I think I would probably make the decision to list the event/item like you did the upick flowers so you are getting the proper donation for the event. I think since you have the donation link up already for the recurring donations it can be a confusion to the donors who may then think that any donation gives them access to the event. I'm sorry - I should have looked at your site to see a little more about what you wanted it to look like to flow into other events and pages. I still think a private page could be a nice way for the information to be conveyed - and then possibly a follow up email that has the details, but I understand that if the goal is to target the whole website audience than that doesn't work.

I know from doing that in the past that those purchases get mixed in with online orders but we just exported them out to Excel to sort and quickly send confirmation emails and forms to make that process easier - now we use Square Marketing and there are so many helpful parameters there to send messages.

I feel like we've come all the way back around to your original question. 

[sashakanno]

It's ok. I appreciate the efforts. I used WIX in the past but moved everything to Square once we had more consistent retail. It makes it really easy to have everything in one place. 

We do host events that are open to all. This one, in particular, is at a private residence so I only want to give the address to people who have make the pledge or donated at the $100 level. Last year we did the same thing but used the Donation button and we emailed people to instructions etc. I was trying to automate it so I didn't have to do that and people could just click to Give and attend. 

But, that's ok. I'll figure it out. 

Thanks again. If you think of anything else lmk. We are a month out now so I have to get sign ups asap. 

[MudFire_Dex]

Still thinking about it - what if your donation page linked to a page that had all of the info - so they can give and attend? It could be a show of gratitude and the info they need? 

Redirect to a website after checkout

1. Sign in to your Square Dashboard and click Payments > Payment Links.
2. Click Create a link > Accept a donation > Advanced settings.
3. Toggle on Redirect to a website after checkout.
4. Enter the website URL, then click *Create link.

[sashakanno]

Ok, I'm trying one more version.

Is there a way to unpublish a page without having to delete it? If I wanted to Hide or Unpublish my Donation page and replace it with this giving campaign page. After this campaign is over could I republish my original Donate page?

I hate having to delete work but I didn't see this as an option when I looked before. 

[sashakanno]

I think this is how I am going to do it. 

https://www.farmlot59.org/long-beach-gives

Seems like there should be a better way but I this will work. Maybe by next year's campaign, there will be a better solution. 

Thanks for all your help.

[sashakanno]

I posted the appointments on the site but then took them down. I need another solution. I guess I could just create an event and then email them the address after they purchase a ticket. 

Your pottery studio looks amazing too!