Make Group Planning and Event Coordination Easier with Comments
Last updated Sep 25, 2024
If you’re managing a community group or volunteer organization, you know how difficult it can be to finalize scheduling and communicate with all group members. For event coordination and volunteer scheduling, you need input from group members. To share community events, you need the calendar to be accessible. But you also need to keep things secure, and prevent unauthorized changes to the group events or scheduling. Here’s how you can use event comments—a feature already built into Teamup—to make group planning easier.
What’s involved in event coordination for groups?
There’s more to scheduling group events than putting them on the calendar. You might need to get input, share instructions, collaborate on decisions, or gather feedback.
And that’s where things get challenging.
Large active groups might have hundreds of members and dozens of activities. Each activity requires some level of planning, plus keeping all group members informed. Smaller groups and volunteer organizations face the same challenges, and it’s often up to a few part-time helpers to try to keep everything organized.
The more details, inputs, considerations, and people involved in coordinating events, the more complex things become.
When read-only isn’t enough for group events
This community calendar is shared securely with a read-only link. Event comments make it easy for people to ask questions, coordinate, and more.
It’s fairly common to use Teamup as a group calendar so members can see upcoming events. Secure, read-only access allows group members to see all the event details, but prevents anyone from changing the events on the schedule. You can embed the calendar, share the calendar link, or both. It’s a secure, simple way to make group events accessible to everyone.
But sometimes your group needs more collaboration than a simple read-only view allows:
A photography club wants members to suggest topics for upcoming workshops, or offer to lead a session on a particular technique they’ve mastered.
A small community group wants to coordinate carpooling arrangements, with members offering available seats or requesting rides.
A soup kitchen needs volunteers to claim specific shifts when they’re available to help.
After a group event, organizers want to gather feedback to make future events even better.
A hiking group requires members to share emergency contact details in case of an incident.
For a fundraising event, members want to offer items and services to include as part of a charity auction.
In many situations, group coordinators need input on upcoming events. But it’s still important to keep people from making unauthorized changes to the calendar. Event comments make it possible to have both: group input and a secure calendar.
Better group planning with comments
With Teamup, you can enable comments for all users. So, even with read-only permission, everyone can use the comments but can’t make other changes to the calendar.
Group members can use comments to provide input, ask questions, share photos or links, and so on. It’s a great solution to allow people to be more involved, while keeping calendar data secure. And with the Teamup app, group members and volunteers can use comments anywhere.
Here are some ways event comments make for better group event planning and volunteer scheduling.
Publish an event flyer and answer questions
If your group or volunteer organization is trying to promote an event, you can do so easily with a free event page. These pages are essentially stand-alone digital event flyers. Just share the event page link on any platform. It’s secure and stays updated automatically.
You can use event comments to take and answer questions, as well. For example, perhaps you’re seeking more volunteers for a fundraising drive or outreach event. If people have questions about volunteering, they can ask right on the event. Others can see both the questions and answers, which often saves a lot of time.
Get input from group members for options
Let group members weigh in on the options for an event. Perhaps your hiking group is planning a weekend trek, and there are a few different routes possible. Create the event with the details about the trail and options for which route to take. Then ask for input in the event comments. All the discussion stays in one place, so you don’t have to track it down elsewhere.
Gather feedback after an event
Let community or group members leave feedback and ask questions securely with event comments.
Immediate feedback is often more accurate and specific than feedback collected hours, days, or weeks after an event. So, before an event closes out, remind participants that they can leave feedback on the event (or the event page) with a quick comment. This can be a helpful strategy for getting insights that might otherwise be lost. For example, after a workshop or webinar, participants can leave questions, notes, and tips. After a community outreach event, volunteers can share ideas and suggestions to make the same event easier or more effective.
Assign tasks to volunteers
You may know you need a certain number of volunteers for a shift or event. You can use event signups to ensure you have enough people committed. Then, use comments to provide specific instructions or assign tasks. Having clear directions ahead of time helps reduce the friction. Plus, it enables people to get started on their responsibilities, rather than waiting around to find out what they should do.
Coordinate on transportation and other details
Maybe your group is planning a trip to the local ComicCon and you want to coordinate on costumes. Or several volunteers want to share a ride to the next event. Or a new group member isn’t sure about the best bus route to take. For every event, there are dozens of small details like these. Having one place to share information and have discussions makes things simpler and more fun.
Track what’s done in one place
You may want to keep an eye on certain milestones or assignments for a particular event. Comments work well for this type of informal tracking. Perhaps volunteers are handing out flyers, or collecting forms, or delivering donations. Each volunteer can leave a comment on the event, so the event coordinator has a good idea of exactly what was done, and who to follow up with if that’s needed.
Upload and share photos with the group
Making memories is an important part of any group activity, whether it’s an outing just for fun or a major event in the community. But often, after an event is over, those photos taken by different people aren’t seen or shared. Or they might be posted to social media, but quickly get lost in the unending stream.
Encourage group members to upload photos from an event to the event itself: they can use the comments to do so. Then all the photos are collected with the event details. Group members can see each other’s photos for any event without the need for separate emails or texts. Having photos collected on the calendar makes it easy to create slideshows or grab the best image for a newsletter or blog post, too.
Try event comments for your group or volunteer scheduling
Teamup is designed for groups and can scale from small to large, so it’s an ideal platform for planning group events and volunteer work. If you’re already using Teamup, event comments make it even more useful. Don’t have Teamup yet? Try out one of our live demos or create your own Teamup calendar today.
Make Group Planning and Event Coordination Easier with Comments
Last updated Sep 25, 2024
If you’re managing a community group or volunteer organization, you know how difficult it can be to finalize scheduling and communicate with all group members. For event coordination and volunteer scheduling, you need input from group members. To share community events, you need the calendar to be accessible. But you also need to keep things secure, and prevent unauthorized changes to the group events or scheduling. Here’s how you can use event comments—a feature already built into Teamup—to make group planning easier.
What’s involved in event coordination for groups?
There’s more to scheduling group events than putting them on the calendar. You might need to get input, share instructions, collaborate on decisions, or gather feedback.
And that’s where things get challenging.
Large active groups might have hundreds of members and dozens of activities. Each activity requires some level of planning, plus keeping all group members informed. Smaller groups and volunteer organizations face the same challenges, and it’s often up to a few part-time helpers to try to keep everything organized.
The more details, inputs, considerations, and people involved in coordinating events, the more complex things become.
When read-only isn’t enough for group events
It’s fairly common to use Teamup as a group calendar so members can see upcoming events. Secure, read-only access allows group members to see all the event details, but prevents anyone from changing the events on the schedule. You can embed the calendar, share the calendar link, or both. It’s a secure, simple way to make group events accessible to everyone.
But sometimes your group needs more collaboration than a simple read-only view allows:
In many situations, group coordinators need input on upcoming events. But it’s still important to keep people from making unauthorized changes to the calendar. Event comments make it possible to have both: group input and a secure calendar.
Better group planning with comments
With Teamup, you can enable comments for all users. So, even with read-only permission, everyone can use the comments but can’t make other changes to the calendar.
Group members can use comments to provide input, ask questions, share photos or links, and so on. It’s a great solution to allow people to be more involved, while keeping calendar data secure. And with the Teamup app, group members and volunteers can use comments anywhere.
Here are some ways event comments make for better group event planning and volunteer scheduling.
Publish an event flyer and answer questions
If your group or volunteer organization is trying to promote an event, you can do so easily with a free event page. These pages are essentially stand-alone digital event flyers. Just share the event page link on any platform. It’s secure and stays updated automatically.
You can use event comments to take and answer questions, as well. For example, perhaps you’re seeking more volunteers for a fundraising drive or outreach event. If people have questions about volunteering, they can ask right on the event. Others can see both the questions and answers, which often saves a lot of time.
Get input from group members for options
Let group members weigh in on the options for an event. Perhaps your hiking group is planning a weekend trek, and there are a few different routes possible. Create the event with the details about the trail and options for which route to take. Then ask for input in the event comments. All the discussion stays in one place, so you don’t have to track it down elsewhere.
Gather feedback after an event
Immediate feedback is often more accurate and specific than feedback collected hours, days, or weeks after an event. So, before an event closes out, remind participants that they can leave feedback on the event (or the event page) with a quick comment. This can be a helpful strategy for getting insights that might otherwise be lost. For example, after a workshop or webinar, participants can leave questions, notes, and tips. After a community outreach event, volunteers can share ideas and suggestions to make the same event easier or more effective.
Assign tasks to volunteers
You may know you need a certain number of volunteers for a shift or event. You can use event signups to ensure you have enough people committed. Then, use comments to provide specific instructions or assign tasks. Having clear directions ahead of time helps reduce the friction. Plus, it enables people to get started on their responsibilities, rather than waiting around to find out what they should do.
Coordinate on transportation and other details
Maybe your group is planning a trip to the local ComicCon and you want to coordinate on costumes. Or several volunteers want to share a ride to the next event. Or a new group member isn’t sure about the best bus route to take. For every event, there are dozens of small details like these. Having one place to share information and have discussions makes things simpler and more fun.
Track what’s done in one place
You may want to keep an eye on certain milestones or assignments for a particular event. Comments work well for this type of informal tracking. Perhaps volunteers are handing out flyers, or collecting forms, or delivering donations. Each volunteer can leave a comment on the event, so the event coordinator has a good idea of exactly what was done, and who to follow up with if that’s needed.
Making memories is an important part of any group activity, whether it’s an outing just for fun or a major event in the community. But often, after an event is over, those photos taken by different people aren’t seen or shared. Or they might be posted to social media, but quickly get lost in the unending stream.
Encourage group members to upload photos from an event to the event itself: they can use the comments to do so. Then all the photos are collected with the event details. Group members can see each other’s photos for any event without the need for separate emails or texts. Having photos collected on the calendar makes it easy to create slideshows or grab the best image for a newsletter or blog post, too.
Try event comments for your group or volunteer scheduling
Teamup is designed for groups and can scale from small to large, so it’s an ideal platform for planning group events and volunteer work. If you’re already using Teamup, event comments make it even more useful. Don’t have Teamup yet? Try out one of our live demos or create your own Teamup calendar today.