Ticket sales using OLX without the Events module?

Jeri Higgins · March 2016

Hi, everyone! I am new on Online Express and this online community. Forgive me if this question has been asked and answered already, but I haven't found it after a cursory search.

We are hosting our annual gala in September and would like to sell tickets and sponsorships online. I know the Events Module is supposed to be required to sell tickets through OLX; however, I've also heard there may be workarounds for that. Has anyone tried it? What are the pros/cons of doing so?

Thanks,

Jeri

Christine Robertson · March 2016

One work around that I have used is to build a Gala specific giving page and set the giving levels by the amounts respectively. You can also use a system of appeals and/or packages to designate what the purchase was. This system will allow you to accept purchases via crecit card and it gives you reporting functionality, but it does require users to do some math in figuring out how much to pay for tickets if users want a number of tickets that you haven't listed as a giving amount.

It is helpful to have the purchases via credit card, but you will have to make sure that you manually adjust the receipt amounts and that you have the correct appeals/packages on each gift.

Faith Murray · March 2016

Without the Event Module, I am curious why you are using Online Express. The chief benefit of Online Express for us has been its integration into Raiser's Edge for dumping donor Event data. In terms of email design, donation page set-up, and flexibility, there are good and cheaper options available. We switched from using PaySimple + Vertical Response to Online Express + Event Module to handle our online donation process. (PaySimple cost us only a fraction of OE to handle our website donations pages and recurring donations, and Vertical Response donates several thousand free emails a month to nonprofits for their email blasts.)

For us, it actually takes just as much time to download donor data from OE as it did to enter the data manually from our PaySimple donations, because donors never type their names and addresses in correct format, and all must be manually re-linked and edited. Our Event Registration pages in OE lack the flexibility to add random fees, like "brunch-only" for a 5K event, without requiring brunch registrants to sign in as regular 5K registrants. We are happy enough with OE overall, but if it were not for the benefits of integration with the Events module, I'm not sure OE would be worth it for us. OE saves us a ton of time by automatically downloading Event data into the Event Module, including complete participant registration info, and the seating design for dinner events definitely beats trying to manually arrange seating in an Access spreadsheet.

Jeri Higgins · March 2016

Christine McMinn:

One work around that I have used is to build a Gala specific giving page and set the giving levels by the amounts respectively. You can also use a system of appeals and/or packages to designate what the purchase was. This system will allow you to accept purchases via crecit card and it gives you reporting functionality, but it does require users to do some math in figuring out how much to pay for tickets if users want a number of tickets that you haven't listed as a giving amount.

It is helpful to have the purchases via credit card, but you will have to make sure that you manually adjust the receipt amounts and that you have the correct appeals/packages on each gift.

Thanks, Christine. I'm working through your suggestions and the Help videos while creating the form. I am hoping this will work out for us since we are primarily looking for a way to process the ticket purchase transaction, and we do not need to collect additional event-specific info (eg, meal preferences, seating preferences). So far I have a form with purchase options for 1,2,3,4 tickets plus an Other button if someone wanted to buy more than 4. I'm using the Comments field to collect guests' names. We are using an Appeal for all transactions related to this event, and would use Packages to differentiate between Tickets, Sponsorships, and other donations.

You mentioned the receipt amount...So it looks like we will have to put in some generic wording about the FMV within the email confirmation, or possibly include that in the wording of Display Name of each "gift." Have you done that?

And when you say to adjust the receipt amount, is that as you are commiting the gift?

If we wanted to process the sponsorship payment as well, it looks like it would be best to create a separate form for that. This would be a slight drawback for someone wanting to purchase a sponsorship and add in extra tickets, but it doesn't happen often (or at least it hasn't in the past)!

Jeri Higgins · March 2016

F Murray:

Without the Event Module, I am curious why you are using Online Express. The chief benefit of Online Express for us has been its integration into Raiser's Edge for dumping donor Event data. In terms of email design, donation page set-up, and flexibility, there are good and cheaper options available. We switched from using PaySimple + Vertical Response to Online Express + Event Module to handle our online donation process. (PaySimple cost us only a fraction of OE to handle our website donations pages and recurring donations, and Vertical Response donates several thousand free emails a month to nonprofits for their email blasts.)

For us, it actually takes just as much time to download donor data from OE as it did to enter the data manually from our PaySimple donations, because donors never type their names and addresses in correct format, and all must be manually re-linked and edited. Our Event Registration pages in OE lack the flexibility to add random fees, like "brunch-only" for a 5K event, without requiring brunch registrants to sign in as regular 5K registrants. We are happy enough with OE overall, but if it were not for the benefits of integration with the Events module, I'm not sure OE would be worth it for us. OE saves us a ton of time by automatically downloading Event data into the Event Module, including complete participant registration info, and the seating design for dinner events definitely beats trying to manually arrange seating in an Access spreadsheet.

We have held off on purchasing the Events Module because it doesn't provide enough features for our types of events. Even at our big gala, we do not do plated meals with assigned seats; we haven't gotten into 5K's. We have also found other event management software on the market that provides additional features (like silent auction item and package management), as well as the ability to pre-register credit cards (and thus charge the donor one-time) rather than asking them to pull out their credit card for each transaction.

We decided to go with Online Express in order to have a Donate Now page that matches our website (new website, that is, to be launched in the coming weeks), and we found BBMS to have a competitive single percentage rate for credit card transactions. We will also use it for e-blast communication once we get our email fields streamlined. Since we are really just looking to process specific credit card amount transactions for our pre-event ticket sales, it looks like we will be able to use OLX without the Events Module.

Our organization also provides tuition-based services (albeit on a sliding scale basis), so we integrate with Education Edge, making us almost "all-in" when it comes to Blackbaud.

Thanks for the insight into your use of OLX. It sounds like downloading the transactions and linking them to RE will involve its own set of challenges.

Faith Murray · March 2016

The ability to pre-register credit cards is something we would love to have. Would you mind sharing what software you use for your events?

Jeri Higgins · March 2016

Sure – the software we’ve
used is called BidPal - http://www.bidpal.com/

Jeri
Higgins,Resource Development Manager,
Concordia Place

3300 N. Whipple, Chicago, IL 60618
| T: 773-463-1600 ext. 415 | E:Jhiggins@concordiaplace.org |
www.ConcordiaPlace.org

Concordia Place was created out of
the vision and dedication of Concordia Lutheran Church, ELCA,
and its members. To learn more, visitwww.concordia-chgo.org.

Steph Williams · April 2016

We have the events module and OLX - and use both heavily.

However, we also have BidPal and have used it for one (about to be 2) events that have signficiant silent and live auctions. They work together very well! The import/export options in BidPal are fantastic and it's been very easy to create queries to get the info out of RE as well.

We do all ticket sales through OLX/RE, and all night-of purchases through BidPal.

Tatianna Peck · September 2016

Faith Murray:

The ability to pre-register credit cards is something we would love to have. Would you mind sharing what software you use for your events?

Hi Faith!

I was lurking and thougth I'd share that we've had a lot of success with Schoolauction.net - it's hard to beat their price point for holding a basic gala-sytle live auction + fund-a-need.

Ticket sales using OLX without the Events module?

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