When InterVarsity Faculty Ministry is providing online-registration help for local Faculty Symposia anywhere around the country, here’s what’s needed and when. Some things here are merely recommended, and some things are required. (And when we say “we,” we mean the national GFM or FM team.)

If you’re reading this in an email (or in any format other than the one found at http://ivstaff.org), please stop now and read the definitive version online at the InterVarsity Staff Site with this shortcut: http://ivstaff.org/gfm/go/fs-checklist/

What You Get

• A registration system that uses two services (Survey Monkey and PayPal) to gather your registrants’ information and to process their payments, respectively.

• Routing of your symposium revenue directly into the appropriate InterVarsity account.

• Periodic spreadsheet reports (frequency to be negotiated) with all registration info gathered.

• Periodic spreadsheet reports from PayPal about registration fees received.

• If we’re not hosting your symposium website, we’ll give you the URL of the registration form for you to publish. And after registrants complete the registration form and pay, they’ll have the chance to skip right back to your informational website for your Faculty Symposium.

Requirements

• Set your registration’s launch date firmly well in advance. (All deadlines below are relative to this launch date.) Note: “As soon as possible” is not a launch date.

• Contact Rachel Bawden (rbawden@intervarsity.org) at least one month before your launch date and tell her [a] that you’d like us to set up an online registration process for you; and [b] what your registration launch date is. The feasibility of your launch date is subject to mutual agreement.

• The following items are required no later than three weeks before your launch date:

1. The name of the InterVarsity staff or official volunteer who will serve as the contact person / registrar for your symposium.
2. If your registrar cannot be an InterVarsity staffer or official volunteer, we will set up a temporary, disposable email alias for your symposium. In that case, provide the email address where such email should be forwarded.
3. The title (if any) of the symposium
4. The registration fee or fees you are charging (offering a maximum of four price points).
5. A list of all the information you want gathered on your registration form. For simplicity’s sake, just indicate any differences you’d like from this example. (Note particularly which items are required and which are optional.)
6. A statement of your cancellation policy: How late may a registrant cancel and get some of their money back, and how much?
7. The date you want registration to close.
8. The InterVarsity account number for revenue and costs.
9. If we’re not hosting your symposium-info website, the URL of the symposium’s website.
   

• Expect to see a draft of your registration form around ten days before your launch date. Submit any needed revisions at least one week before launch.

Recommendations

• You launch your online registration at least two months before your symposium — and as much as six months before.

• You also work with us to publish your symposium website (the informative stuff to promote and explain your symposium), not just the registration process. See the Event Website Set-Up Checklist for details.

• You build into your symposium budget the fact that you’ll be charged PayPal fees (usually about $2 per registration).

• For this reason, we strongly urge you not to offer full refunds. You will lose money if you do.