Idealware intends to provide rigorous reviews of many different kinds of nonprofit software. However, it will take some time to create all these detailed reviews. Our A Few Good Tools series provides some thoughts in the meantime by recommending software that is used and liked by the Idealware community. They may not be the very best of their kind, but they have worked well for us. Perhaps they will also work for you.

In 1922, etiquette expert Emily Post decreed that "Acceptances or regrets are always written. An engraved form to be filled in is vulgar."

These days, where it's commonplace to use the Internet and email to communicate, would Ms. Post approve of an online RSVP form in lieu of a written letter? It seems doubtful - but these forms are often a convenient option and low-cost option that can be a great help in planning and organizing your organization's next networking event, training session, or workshop.

There are a number of online software tools that can help organizations planning free events. These tools can help organizers collect an estimated headcount, gather information from attendees, send follow-up emails to the attendees, get registrants into a database, and more. While many sophisticated event registration tools exist, the pricing structure is often tailored to those charging substantial fees – it's hard to justify paying several hundred dollars to collect attendee information for a free training, for instance.

To find strong options for free events in particular, we asked seven nonprofit technology specialists what software they would recommend, and rounded up their suggestions here. While the options listed below likely aren't the only good registration options available, they have worked well for the specialists we interviewed, and could be a good fit for your organization, too.

The Old Standbys

There are a few obvious options that come to most people's minds when thinking about free events: simple email RSVPs and Evite. While either option might work perfectly well for your basic needs, there are some downsides.

• Email. Why not just ask people to RSVP to an email address? Well, you certainly can, but an email RSVP process can quickly turn into a lot of work if you want to gather more than a simple headcount or expect more than a few attendees at your event. If you need to create a list of attendees or add registrants to your database, someone will need to enter the information by hand. And capturing more than just a name and email address will likely entail a messy process of emailing people back to capture more information. A registration tool can often save a lot of time and headache.

   

If you're planning to use email, consider at least setting up a separate email address to more easily see who's responded. Asking for information in a numbered format (i.e., "please provide 1) your name, 2) your organization") will also make it more likely that respondents will give you the information you need.

• Evite (www.evite.com). Evite is a free and familiar RSVP Web site with easy-to-use tools to help you send customizable graphic invites. It's easy to track simple "Yes", "No", and "Maybe" responses, and keep track of those who haven't yet viewed the invite. While perfectly functional, Evite is more appropriate for social events than professional ones, as it shows notable Evite branding throughout the process. Because it lists the names of all the people who have said they would attend, there's not much privacy. There's no easy way to download the list of people attending.
  

Better Options

Several free or inexpensive tools that provide more useful functionality – such as branded registration pages, downloads of attendee info, and more – than the old standbys.

• Eventbrite (www.eventbrite.com). Previously known as Mollyguard (the company just changed its name), Eventbrite offers straightforward and useful registration functionality. If your events are free, using even their Premium service won't cost you anything. Otherwise, your fee is based on the ticket price of your event. They offer a nice set of features, including the ability to tailor the registration page with basic colors and a logo, email registrants, and export information.

• Upcoming (www.upcoming.org). Similar to Evite’s RSVP functionality, Yahoo's Upcoming allows those you invite to publicly note whether they will be attending, but it feels a bit less corporate and a bit more homegrown. The site also offers additional community features – for instance, the ability to add comments to events, see events that your friends are attending, and view events via RSS feed. It integrates with iCalendar, and is free for all events.

• SurveyMonkey (www.surveymonkey.com). Surprisingly, many of our contributors mentioned a tool that wasn't designed for event registration at all. SurveyMonkey is an online survey tool, but it works just as well to collect RSVPs and basic information about those planning to attend. It offers a free service which lets you create (ad-free) Web forms with up to 10 questions, and collect RSVPs from up to 100 attendees. A Professional account, at $19.95 a month, gives you the additional functionality to customize the Web form with custom colors and your logo, download the attendee information, and direct registrants to your website rather than the SurveyMonkey Web site when the visitors finish their registration.

• Build your own registration form. For those that have experience in building HTML forms attached to databases, or those using a content management system that includes a form builder, creating a simple registration form of your own might be the easiest option. A form on your Web site could just write to a database – though don't forget to plan a way for your less tech-savvy staff members to view the list of those registered. Building your own form allows you to customize the registration form to look exactly like your website, and perhaps even write information for those who register directly into your main database.
  

For Those with Sophisticated Needs

If you offer a number of free events, or a mix of paid and free events, consider investing in a highly polished registration tool that will support more complex functionality. These tools typically offer registration forms that merge seamlessly with your Web site, the ability to collect other info – like meal preferences or the sessions they prefer to attend, methods to limit attendance, sophisticated reporting and export, mass-email functionality, the ability to print name tags, and much more. These sites generally charge on a per-registrant basis and run anywhere from about $1 per registrant up to $4 per registrant or more.

If you are looking for these types of advanced features, and are ready to invest more money to do so, you need to look beyond the realm of tools targeted at free events to those . While this area warrants an article of its own, consider taking a look at Acteva or 123Signup as less expensive options, or consider Cvent or RegOnline as pricier tools that may offer more advanced features.

Choosing the Right Package

Before you sign up for a service, think about whether you need some of the more advanced features or if you'd prefer to keep things simple and free. Then determine the features that are important for you – does the registration form need to match your Web site? Do you need to be able to download attendees' information and import it into a database? Does your budget allow for a more expensive tool? Or perhaps more advanced functionality, like the like ability to limit attendance, collect meal preferences, or print name tags are more important than saving money.

As for deciding whether to side with Emily Post and request responses by hand instead? We'll leave that one to you.

Thanks to TechSoup for their financial support of this article, as well as to the nonprofit technology professionals who provided recommendations, advice, and other help:

• Julia Bissell, YNPN
• Marion Conway, Marion Conway Consulting 
• Heather Gardner-Madras, gardner madras | strategic creative
• Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog
• Steve Perez, Working Families Party
• Holly Ross, N-TEN
• Robert Weiner, Robert L. Weiner Consulting

This article was edited by Idealware and TechSoup; any errors or omissions are not our contributor's responsibility. 

© copyright CompuMentor 2006 - licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License

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