NEW! Online Event Registration for Raiser's Edge NXT

Robyn Mendez

This week we are excited to announce the first iteration of online event registration is now available in web view for all US-based Raiser’s Edge NXT customers with the Events Module.  


Online event registration in Raiser’s Edge NXT helps your staff work more efficiently by removing much of the duplicative work required to stand up event management in Raiser’s Edge, then configure the online registration form in Online Express or Blackbaud Net community.  The first version of online event registration allows organizations to configure online registration forms for RSVP and ticketed events natively within Raiser’s Edge NXT.  


With online event registration, organizers can:

-    Create 100% mobile-responsive, online registration forms within Raiser’s Edge NXT leveraging easy-to-use “drag and drop” technology… No more toggling back & forth with OLX!

-    Accept RSVPs and/or single-ticket purchases online for event participants with constituent data written/added directly into Raiser’s Edge NXT… No manual matching required! 

-    Gather additional information like t-shirt size or meal preference from attendees at the time of registration. 

-    Establish a cap on the maximum number of attendees who can register online to attend an event

-    Accept online payments for registration fees and additional donations

-    Customize automated email communications to registrants 

-    Monitor real-time online registration progress directly in Raiser’s Edge NXT

-    … and much, much more!  

Where to find Online Registration in Raiser’s Edge NXT

For Events Module customers, Online registration forms will show up as a new tile.  

 




Admins can create a role and assign Event permissions to other users by navigating to Control Panel > Security and selecting to Add/Edit permissions for Online registration forms. 

Love these new features?  We want to hear from you!  

Online event registration is one in series of releases aimed at improving the event management and registration experience for our Raiser's Edge NXT customers.  We are considering the following features for future releases: 

1. Support for other RSVP responses like participant declines
2. More complex types of event registration such as golf tournaments (foursome support) and gala table purchases.  

What would you like to see next?  We want to hear from you!  Feedback from customers like you help guide future improvements to our solutions.  

 

Samantha Robertson

Exciting! When will this be available in Canada?

Robyn Mendez

We currently don't have a timeline for when online event registration will be available in Canada.  

Veronica Accardo

We've already started using the forms for upcoming events and are liking them, for the most part! One thing we noticed that has caused confusion is in the transaction details we include in automated emails. It includes a line for "Contribution Amount", which is the tax-deductible amount of the total contribution. This confused several guests because the contribution listed didn't match their total donation. Is there a way to change "contribution" to "tax-deductible" amount? We want to include these details for our guests, but I would also rather not field hundreds of questions about why the amounts don't match! 

Kate Sklodowska

This is a great first iteration. I can see where this would help some of your customers.  However, I won't be able to use this until guests are made non-constituent participants on the event record instead of automatically creating a new full constituent record for them. I can only image the hundreds of garbage records in my very clean database created for reunion registrations.  (Also, how do I get rid of the recaptcha - that thing is the worst!)

Aldera Chisholm

We would love to see this generate a scannable code (Bar code, QR Code) on the confirmation so that we could scan our event attendees in at the event. We have a few events that have large numbers of attendees arriving at once and scanning them in using a phone app is the fastest way to get them in. I would like to be able to move these events off EventBrite and into RE directly. 

Loren Leidinger

I discovered a major drawback to the NXT event forms today.  There is no way to select the number of tickets/registrants for a sponsorship.  So, if someone wants to purchase a sponsorship and they get 4 tickets there is no way to note this in the system and there is no way to capture their guests names.  When I called support. They recommended that I create the online form for this in Online Express.

Art Bryman

FYI: "Online registration forms only support phone types with a Phone number format <none>."

Art Bryman

Error message: "You can only select Prices that are $0, because no payment configuration is set for this form."

Please add link to setting up payment configuration (https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/192905).

Samantha McGuin

Thanks for all the comments on our online registration release!  I'll answer some of your questions/comments in this reply.

Veronica Accardo‍  Good call on the contribution amount verbiage. Currently we don't have captioning or design options around what is in the registration block that includes registration details in the email. Contribution amount is the label used across NXT, but I could see where you would want to change that label or give an explanation on your donor facing email. I've added an Idea for voting and tracking in your name: https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-3053.

Kate Sklodowska‍ Great feedback, thanks!  One way to ensure that your guests become "named guests" instead of constituents is to limit the information you capture. If you only collect the first and last name in the 'Registrant details" section, only Named guest records will be created. If any sort of contact information is included by the guest, constituent records will be created. Hosts - the person filling out the form, will always be constituent records since we always collect an email address to send the confirmation email to.  Here is an Idea that would be worth voting on for updates on any future work we do in this area: https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-3047.

Aldera Chisholm‍ This is a great idea! There's an Idea that has been added on this already; please vote to help us prioritize this work and allow you to get updates on future enhancements around barcode scanning in events! https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-2993

‍  You are correct; the online registration form only supports single ticket price selection at this time. We have plans to add this functionality in the future, along with corresponding backoffice functionality.  Here is the corresponding Idea for voting and tracking: https://renxt.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RENXT-I-2868

Arthur Bryman BCREPRO‍  Thanks for the tip on the phone types, we have made a change in the Form Settings area to make this more clear.  We'll look and see what we can do to enhance the payment configuration directions!


Thank you all for your feedback as we continue to grow our online registration form in NXT!


Samantha McGuin

Principal Product Manager


 

Dianne Elliott

When will this be available in the UK.  We currently use Online Express and the RE Event app

 

Wendy Bondeson

Do the NXT online event registrations forms supporting adding a guest? How would a guest register for the event?

Elaine Tucker

For our events where people "invite" guests to register, we create an event form that is "free"; not optimal, but it's a work around for now.

Wendy Bondeson

You have a form for the registrant and one for guests?

Elaine Tucker

Yes, it's a work-a-round for now, and not optimal, but the ease of use for our hosts of "virtual tables"/Sponsors really helps the attendees register in a way that is easy for them, and we can see which form they used to register. It is more work in the background for us, but being able to copy an event form and give it a "Host" name is relatively simple - our learning curve was to keep all the forms inside a single event, the first time we did it we created events for each sponsor which was CRAZY! (lesson learned) We just create the host form, add it to a page on our website, and then send the link to the hosts for them to share.

Carline Senior

@Samantha McGuin hello, what does this mean “event module customers”? I am unable to add a form

Samantha McGuin

@Carline Senior Hi Carline, this post is from 2020 so what we called things may be different than today, but if you have RENXT you should be able to add an event registration form. I would suggest you check permissions to make sure you have rights to add a registration form under the Events roles, and if that doesn't work I would encourage you to contact Support to see if we can get you up and running!

Carline Senior

@Samantha McGuin
Thanks. I just created the case on support as I do have all rights