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Virtual Event Setup

From the Start button on the Home page of your account or the Fundraisers or Events tabs, click Virtual Event.

Basics:

  • Give your event a Title/Name and tagline. 
  • Provide a funding goal and decide whether or not you will make this goal visible on your event registration page by moving the Show Goal toggle on or off (this will enable a thermometer line increasing toward your goal). 
  • Provide for your guests the date and time of your event.
  • Select your LiveStream option for your event. Please see our article on LiveStream option considerations.
  • Upload Media created for your event - images, logos, videos, etc. The primary image here will be available for use as a backdrop image on your event registration page
  • Upload Sponsor logos, which will be visible at the bottom of the immersive guest experience page. Once 10 logos have been added, they will scroll on a carousel.
  • Provide social links specific to your event.

Content:

  • Provide more detailed information about or messaging relative to your event. 
  • Include images or videos and you can pull from Facebook content.
  • Note that you can change the font size or color, as well as the formatting.
  • You might also want to consider adding Sponsor Logos in here as well - you can also link those logos to sponsor websites.

Livestream:

 Guest Experience:
  • Guest Experience tab allows you to choose all the options that relate to how your guests will experience your campaign. Under this tab, you can choose to select whether you want allow participants to provide their payment information after they purchase their ticket. Check the box  Pre-Auth On Check Out to allow this option.  This is recommended for in-person events especially, in order to cut down on the time during check-in.
  • If you would like to allow purchases without a card on file check the box as shown below. If you allow purchases without a card, then the guests can make these purchases from their guest page without pre-authorizing their card, and you will need to contact them after your event in order to obtain their payment information.
  • You can make your selection for the Guest link visibility by choosing an option from the dropdown menu. Each guest has their own unique campaign link where they can participate in your campaign's fundraising activities. You can decide when or if your guests are provided their links. The options listed are Upon Purchase, Upon Check-In or Never. If this option is left blank, guests will be provided their guest link upon registration or ticket assignment.
  •  As part of the Guest Experience options you can control the default and the ordering of fundraising options on the guest page. Select the Default page mode from the drop down menu and also hold and move around the order that they will show on the guest page under Page Mode Ordering.
  • As a default your guests will be able to check themselves out from their guest page and if you do not want this option then check the box Turn Off Guest Self Checkout.
  • The box under the heading Suggested Donation Amounts on Guest page can be checked if you would like to show a set of suggested donation amounts to the guest when they click the donate button from their guest page.
  • In the Guest Page Default Placeholder content section, you can provide custom content to be displayed to  your guests on their guest page before your stream is live. This content is displayed in the same area as the live stream would appear. Fill out the Guest Page Default Placeholder Content and toggle to Show Placeholder. Placeholder feature is optional and is used to provide campaign information to guests when they go to their guest link before the Event takes place.
  • By clicking on "Preview as a Guest" you can preview the event guest page without needing to do a fake/offline registration first. The guest page will let you view everything, but it won’t let you actually take any action since it’s a demo guest view.

Tickets:

  • Here you will create tickets to your event, whether they are single or group tickets. BetterUnite will auto-create a registration ticket for your event and you may edit, hide or use that ticket level.
  • Group tickets can also be used as Sponsorship levels.
  • You can provide a Stop Ticket Purchases date and a Total Tickets number, that will allow the system to count backwards so that you don't oversell.
  • With any ticket level, you may associate images and/or descriptions, as well as Fair Market Value, hide after specified date, associate a ticket level with a Donation Fund and allow for installment payments.

Event Offers:

  •  These can be considered in-event fundraising opportunities, but can also be made visible on the registration or ticket page for your event.
  • Gift Levels: These are Fund-A-Need levels (sometimes also called Paddles Up levels). When used at in-person events, these are usually behind the scenes designated levels so that an organization admin can add donation amounts to attendees Guest carts during a Live Auction or Paddles Up section of an event. For a Virtual Event, BetterUnite has expanded on this function to allow you to provide a description of your Gift Level as well as to associate an image - much like a crowdfunding campaign giving level or like a virtual event program. If you do not designate an amount, the Gift Level will read Any on the My Event page and allow donors/participants to type in whatever amount they choose. When a guest selects a Gift Level, it will say Give on the confirmation page. With any gift level, you may associate images and/or descriptions, as well as Fair Market Value, hide after a specified date, associate a gift level with a Donation Fund and allow for Instant Purchase - meaning your guests' preauthorized card will automatically be charged and this item will not be added to the Guest cart.
  • Items for Sale: Anything that you want your guests to be able to purchase before, during or after your event. When a guest selects an Item for Sale, it will say Buy on the confirmation page. With any item for sale, you may associate images and/or descriptions, as well as Fair Market Value, hide after a specified date, associate with a Donation Fund and allow for Instant Purchase - meaning your guests' preauthorized card will automatically be charged and this item will not be added to the Guest cart.

Raffles:

Communications:

  • The Default Email Note will be sent to your guests upon registering or purchasing a ticket. If this is a ticketed event, you might consider adding in your 501)c)(3) tax donation language. You can use merge text fields here to personalize the note as well. You can also add logos by inserting images.
  • The Event Purchase Acknowledgement Email will be sent to your guests once they have purchased any event offers, made an in-event donation or won a silent or live auction item. There will be an itemized list of purchases included in this email. This Email should include 501(c)(3) language if applicable. If you have designated Fair Market Value for your event items, this will also be calculated in the email.
  • Pre-Checkout Commentary is any language that you would like for your purchaser to see prior to checking out or registering.
  • Post-Checkout Commentary is any message that you would like for your purchaser to see after they have registered to the event or purchased their tickets. 

  • If you have signed up for Advanced Messaging within your campaign, you can also customize the below communications

    Ticket Purchaser Text/SMS

    Auction Acknowledgements

  • BetterUnite automates an event reminder 3 days prior and 8 hours prior to an event. Your guests will be able to click through their ticket listed in the email reminder and preauthorize a credit card  (if applicable) or provide information about their guests and send ticket links directly to their guests via email or text (if applicable). 
  • If you DO NOT want this reminder to be sent, please select Turn Off Event Reminder to Guests.
  • If you would like to provide custom content or messaging for that reminder, you can Edit the Event Reminder Content. Event Reminders will still provide guests with their My Event link and their full ticket link.
  • Communications page also lets you set up Conditional Responses to your guests. You can use this function if you'd like to send different communications for different ticket purchasers. These specific responses are appended to the email content that goes out by default as configured above. For more details on this refer to article Conditional Responses.
  • Event Specific Contact Information: The name and information of the Contact in your account or organization's BetterUnite profile will be the default contact on your event page, but you can change that on a per-campaign or per-event basis.
  • Purchase Notification: If you want to be notified of any purchases or registrants by BetterUnite via email, please make sure this is checked.
  • Notification Recipients: Include up to 5 email addresses to be notified when transactions are processed, tickets are purchased or registrations made to your event.

Tickers:

Under the Tickers Tab, you can create tickers with custom content or choose to display donor list. Active tickers are displayed to your guests on their guest page in the order in which you sort them.

 

Advanced:

  • In the Guest Requirements section by default the Guest Full Name, Email, Phone will be available to provide per guest in a ticket purchase. These fields are captured after a ticket purchase is completed, where the purchaser is presented with option to fill out their guest/ticket information per guest. You can add custom fields for Guest Requirements and Check Out Requirements in this section without leaving the page.

    If you do not want to collect attendee information after check out Check the box Hide Guest Info?

  • Purchaser Check-Out Requirements determines the information you'd like to collect from the purchaser/donor. This information is collected before the purchase/registration is complete. By default the Purchaser First Name, Last Name, and Email will be required for purchases. You can add more optional or required fields in this section.
  • You can hide the donation buttons on the campaign landing page and further hide the additional donation field that your guest will be offered upon checkout or registration. Check the box Hide Donation Buttons? to activate this option.
  • You can customize the donation amounts in the pre-determined donation buttons or you can hide the buttons and have only a single DONATE button visible.
  • If you do not want the campaign to be visible to others (maybe it's a VIP event or Invite Only event, or a test event you're practicing with), then you can hide this campaign from public pages (your BetterUnite Always On page). Check Hide From Public Pages to hide your campaign.
  • You can display a list of people who have purchased tickets or registered to the campaign on the registration page by checking the box Display Donors.
  • Under the Tags section, you can add the tags to be used for all purchases in the campaign. Tags are attributes you can associate with each transaction, which then allow you to search and segment later on. (you don't need to add a tag as your campaign name, purchases will already automatically be associated with your campaign.)
  • Maximum Donation Limit is optional to enter if you want to impose a maximum amount per donation. If you don't want to impose a limit, leave this field blank.
  • Progress Indicator Options allows you to choose options for the amount displayed on your campaign landing page. For your Campaign progress you can choose from the two options, 1. Gross amount paid to your campaign or Net amount received. You can also indicate if you'd like to reflect in - progress transactions like auction items or other in-event purchases in guest carts in your campaign progress.
  • Content for Donors or Attendees section is used to add waivers, disclaimers, or other lengthy documentation to be shown to the donors upon checkout. 
  • Under the Advanced Tab->Customize Labels, you can customize your Button Texts and Section Titles for Raffle, Auction, Register, Event Offers Donate and Giving Levels.

Discounts and Access

  • Provide Discount, Access or Bulk Discount codes as needed.

Fundraiser Teams:

In a Virtual Event Setting, you can use Fundraiser Teams to encourage ticket-buyers or guests to create teams or "Virtual Tables" - thereby further engaging your guests and potentially increasing the accountability around people tuning into your livestream event. 

  • Toggle Fundraiser Teams on or off, depending on whether or not you want to use them for your event.
  • Create Default Content for your Fundraiser Teams - specific content that will populate onto the "child" campaigns that your supporters create. Your supporters (or Team or "Table" captains) will then be able to personalize this content.
  • Set up Triggered Email Team Communications specific to when 
    • A New Team is Registered
    • Fundraisers Join a Team
    • On the First Donation to a Team
    • At 10% of the Goal (set by the Team Captain)
    • At 50% of the Goal
    • At 100% of the Goal
  • Fundraiser Team Resources are documentation that will be made available to all fundraisers joining this campaign.
  • You can indicate whether you need the new child campaign/fundraiser/peer-to-peer creator or joiner to register first. You can toggle the "Require Registration" to enable this.
  • You can toggle "Allow members to create teams"  to allow team members to create their own fundraisers after having joined already-existing teams. 

Funding:

  • Make sure that the appropriate WePay account is linked.
  • Make sure that the Fee Assignment is as you would like it to present to your guests upon checkout. If your event is registration-only, your guests might still choose to make a donation to your organization and your Fee Assignment designations will hold in this instance.
  • In the case that you choose to have credit cards preauthorized, your guests will be able to Opt-In to. cover service fees.

Other:

Under the Other tab you can:

  • Find a shortcut link to your event Guest Cart (which is also linked in the Action Center on the Manage Event page)
  • Create a Call List linked to this event
  • Create Stretch Goals or Milestones relative to the fundraising efforts of your campaign. As the goals are achieved, your supporters will see them on the campaign page and each achieved goal will automatically unlock the next stretch goal to make that visible to supporters and encourage further giving.
  • Link Campaigns - if you have a Volunteer Event or an Online Fundraiser that supports or is paired with your Virtual Event, you can link them and each campaign will be linked to the other's campaign page.
  • You can create Multiple Showtimes if you plan to "air" your Livestream event more than once at different days or times.
  • Copy your Event here if you have multiple similar events that maybe just need small tweaks.

Manage Event

At any point in the creation of your event, you can make your event Live or Active. Once you do so, you will see the Manage Event dashboard overview of your event. You get a statistical and graphic look at how your event fundraising and/or ticket sales are going, an Action Center with important links to managing different aspects of your event, Sharing Options for making your registration or ticket sales pages available to your donors/guests, and itemized Transactions list and Purchased Tickets list.

ACTION CENTER:

  • Edit Event will take you back to the event creation tabs - you can adjust just about anything relative to your event after making your event live. You will not be able to delete a ticket or giving level once they've been purchased or an auction item once it's received bids, but you can hide them.
  • Check in Guests:  is the Check-in page for your event. This is used at in-person events by people at the registration table to check-in guests, get preauthorizations on credit cards, assign paddle numbers, see the ticket level that was purchased and text My Event links to guests that will allow guests to bid on auction items, donate, and tell them their paddle and table numbers. For a Virtual Event, this is a great resource for finding out more detail about your guests as they register and re-sending My Event links on a one-off basis. If a guest asks you as the organizer to preauthorize their card for them, you can do that here. While you do not need to assign paddle numbers, should you decide to, BetterUnite can Auto-generate Paddle Numbers here as well. You can also export a list of guests to excel or csv.
  • Guest Carts: all of your guests in-event fundraising purchases or donations will filter into the Guest Cart and you will be able to checkout each guests after the event. 
    • Quick Add allows you to add any of your in-event fundraising items to a particular guest cart - referencing their name or the paddle number you might have assigned. You can also add a donation amount to a guest cart here as well.
    • Guest Carts allows you to look up particular Guest's Carts by Search or click Show All and see all carts with items in them.
    • At the end of your event, you will go through and checkout each guest. If the Checkout button is green, that means your guest has a preauthorized card associated with their My Event page and you can simply click through to verify the cart items and charge their card. If the button is blue, that means your guests has NOT preauthorized a card and you can either enter a card number or take an offline payment (cash or check). If you click the blue Checkout button, you will be taken to a checkout page with an itemized list of purchases or donations and you can send this checkout URL to your guest so that they may check themselves out as well.
    • On the All Purchases tab you can also Export to File to see a full list of transactions.
  • Thermometer: In the Virtual Event, you might want to use your thermometer to guide your Auctioneer or MC in calling out names (and even donation amounts) of people as they are giving - essentially using the thermometer as an internal guide for fund-a-need or paddles up levels.
  • Manage Tables and Guest Teams can be used if you are creating Virtual Tables or Teams to assign your guests to. This has no practical purpose within the Virtual Event, rather it is a way to engage your guests and further the feeling of being on-site or together at an event.
  • Under the More tab within the Action Center, you can:
    • Put your event on hold
    • Mark your event as Completed (you can also go to Edit Event > Active > Change > Mark as Completed
    • Generate an Event Analysis Report
    • Import Attendees - if you do not want to have your attendees sign up for your event, rather would like to import a guest list, you can map your excel or csv file to the BetterUnite template and import your attendees here.
    • Copy your Event here if you have multiple similar events that maybe just need small tweaks.

GUEST MESSAGING:

  • Email Guest Links enables you to email each of your guests their immersive guest link or My Event Link, by simply clicking a button.
  • Text or send SMS messages to your guests: You can either text a message to your guests (for example: We've added new items to the silent auction - go check it out!) or text your guests their own secure My Event link (perhaps at the beginning of your virtual event, essentially using this feature as a bulk checkin option).
  •  Use your email marketing platform to send branded communications to your guests directly. We can guide you to that by clicking FIND OUT HOW on your Manage Event page.

 

SHARING OPTIONS:

You can share your event on Facebook or Twitter directly. You can also copy your event URL and email that link to your guests. You can also link your event URL to a Buy Tickets or Sign Up button on your webpage. Alternatively, if you have already created a ticket or event page on your organization's website, you can simply embed the checkout URL or code.

 

Please see attached a printable pdf for Virtual Event Instructions.

Virtual Event Instructions

Need Additional Help?

We're here to assist you in any way we can. Don't hesitate to reach out to support@betterunite.com

Let's go do some good.