Posts by Eric
Well he didn’t get on the front page of SportsNet news for winning the Stanley Cup but he still looks great in a jersey! Our team Captain, Dave Bodnarchuk and the Tour of Alberta team announced their phenomenal race, scheduled to debut Sept 3rd-8th 2013
Hats off to the Rural Alberta Development Fund and everyone else involved in this getting this fantastic event off the group.
photo from sportsnet.ca
Who should learn this: Event Organizers & Assistants
Purpose: Make it easier to create questions with long text
How to: In the Create or Review stage, click and hold the textbox handle in the lower right hand corner. You can now stretch out your question text box!
For more information see the FAQ: 2.7. How do I stretch out a question textbox?
BEFORE STRETCHING
AFTER STRETCHING
Graduation is expensive and Grad coordinators are always looking to reduce costs. Click on the Youtube link below to listen to a clip from our recent Graduation Best Practices Seminar and learn how schools across Canada are fundraising thousands of dollars for their Grad.
Graduation Best Practices Seminar – Fundraising Tips
Want even more tips on how to improve your Grad? Be sure to check back to the EventIQ blog for all of the tips shared at our recent seminars hosted in Edmonton and Winnipeg. Each year’s discussion has been more spirited than the last and we’re looking forward to sharing the knowledge that we’ve gained with schools that were unable to attend.
Excited to join in the discussion? Come to the next free Graduation Best Practices Seminar hosted in Calgary! On Jan 29th 2013 at Western Canada High School or meet us in Regina on February 22nd at the Conexus Arts Centre to speak to grad coordinators, business managers, parent volunteers and administrators for lunch and an afternoon of networking and discussion regarding all things Grad.
Schools of all sizes attend the seminar to gather tons of great ideas about increasing student involvement, fundraising tips and ways to lower the cost of grad. Learn the ways to cut down your workload and key strategies to make your 2013 grad a success!
RSVP today and make 2013′s grad the best your school has ever seen!
RSVP for the 2013 Calgary seminar
RSVP for the 2013 Regina seminar
As a recently married man and new home owner, I’ve come to learn very quickly that the Do-It-Yourself attitude can save you lots of money. Sure, it may not always save you heartache and frustration but if you’re trying to save every penny, that’s the way to go. The real question is, when do you decide to Do-It-Yourself and keep costs down and when do you pony up for the professional? This is a constant struggle for the Grad Coordinator. Ask any of the Grad Coordinators that attended the Graduation Best Practices Seminars in Edmonton and Winnipeg and they’ll tell you that there’s no easy answer when it comes to Grad.
It goes without saying that most schools with over 100 graduating students would cater their on graduation banquet. Nor would they ever consider having an amateur hobbyist photograph their ceremony. And try as I might with teaching our Grad Coordinators how to DJ their own dances (see below), most everyone would agree that we should probably leave the music to the professionals. But what about distributing and selling tickets? Let’s not forget that the graduation experience often starts right here.
Ultimately all of those other professional services mentioned above are chosen every year by Grad coordinators to ensure that their guests “feel” like they’re getting their money’s worth. And of course there’s also a price in creating that experience.
As I had mentioned at the Edmonton Best Practices Seminar, the average cost of a banquet ticket in Edmonton is $62.00. By comparison, you’d be edging towards floor seats at Leonard Cohen for $67.00. That should spell it out very clearly for everyone that graduations are big time events and should be treated as such. It’s unlikely that you would ever purchase tickets for a big concert and not know where you were seated – simply put, that ‘s just what you expect when you go to a big show. But is that more than what is expected of a sixty dollar banquet ticket? Concert promoters know full well how to craft your concert experience from the time you see your first poster, to when you purchase tickets, to when you walk out of the venue back to your car.
After having hosted four of our Graduation Best Practices Seminars, I can tell you that graduation party planning is extraordinarily complicated. Just look at all of the new graduation ideas that pop up on Pinterest every day! Walking that tightrope between costs and savings is never an easy one. And in the end, it all boils down to the kind of show you want to put on…
Though, I’m sure if any Grad coordinator were to actually DJ their own grad, it would surely be a night to remember!
Special thanks to Maria Crawley at St. Francis Xavier High School for attending and spinning our Graduation Best Practices Seminar – you rock!
Who should learn this: Event Organizers & Assistants
Purpose: Organizer can receive payments by any method, regardless of the settings for their event’s registration form.
How to: Log in and add a registration. When reaching the payment page, choose either “Invoice Guest” or “Receive Full Payment Onsite”
For more information see the FAQ: 8.13. How do I enter a registration on behalf of a guest?
Who should learn this: Event Organizers & Assistants
Purpose: Pre-fill the address and save your guests time entering it in themselves
How to: First, enter the exact street address of where your event is being held. Second, in the Guest Contact Questions, check “Default from the Location.”
For more information see the FAQ: 3.4. When guests RSVP, how can address fields be pre-filled?
Who should learn this: Event Organizers & Assistants
Purpose: Process refunds for your guests
How to: There are two different types of refunds you can process 1) a portion of a registration 2) an entire registration. Please view the FAQ for instructions on how to process each type of refund:
1) 8.19. How do I refund a portion of a response?
2) 8.18. How do I refund an entire purchase and delete the response after?
The other famous Dwight…
…or is he?
The other Eric…
…well since Mitch dressed up as me this year, I guess I can claim to not have copped out on Halloween. My best costume yet, score for Eric(s)!
We’ve made a host of new changes that we’re excited to show off (keep an eye out for more posts about our new changes!)… but first, a quick tip on how to enter in the Payments Received for Invoice registrations.
1. Be sure to clear your cache and allow your browser to load all the new features properly. If you need a refresher on how to clear your cache, please read my prior blog post, “Time to cache out”
2. Find the record you need to enter a payment received for and click “Edit Response”
3. Without changing any details, click “Update” – this will bring you to the Payment page
4. Enter in the a) Amount Received – either the cash or cheque you’ve received in hand b) the Name of the Guest for which the record is being paid. Confirm by clicking “Submit Payment”
Option: If you wish to change the Current Charge/Balance Outstanding, you can do so by clicking the “Adjust this Total” button. That will reveal a drop down where you can enter an adjustment amount. Click the “Save and Update Total” button to see how your adjustment affects the Current Charge/Balance Outstanding
Logged in as an administrator, you will see the Amount Received number box whenever you process an Invoice. Be sure to use this feature when you are processing on-site registrations!
This new method of editing the record also allows you to tack on additional purchases to a record…more on that to follow!
