Recurring Events – it’s time to ‘Make It Happen’

Training courses, youth groups, sports classes, drama clubs… events like this form the bedrock of many non-profit organisations. As CiviCRM can’t yet handle such complex ‘recurring’ events, a new Make It Happen campaign aims to change that.

Perhaps your training course runs for six weeks twice a year, your sports class runs every week or your drama club runs during term-time only. Whatever your scenario, the new Recurring Events functionality will help. And for those with relatively simple requirements, it will allow the recording of attendance for Civi groups so that you can track growth and decline – a key indicator of engagement.

The term ‘recurring event’ covers various scenarios:

1. Events with multiple sessions - An event such as a training course with several sessions and a defined start and finish date. It may last for 10 weeks but a participant registers once (either at the start or as the course progresses).  There will be attendance fields for every session.

2. Repeating Events - The same event that repeats on several occasions eg a one day training event repeated monthly.  Different people sign up for different dates. 

3. Recurring Events - An ongoing event eg a regular toddler group/Sunday school group.  Set it up once and it can either run ad infinitum (eg Sunday school every week of the year) or you can block out weeks when it doesn't run (eg no toddler group in the school holidays).  

Functionality will include the ability to:

• Create events/courses as described above, with the flexibility to reflect holidays or alterations
• Re-use previously created schedules 
• Create smaller groupings within an event eg breakout groups within a course
• Generate registers and record and report on attendance by individual/event, mapping trends over time. (The Civimobile project will make on-the-spot attendance recording possible on mobiles/tablets)
• Record Civi group attendance, with reporting reflecting group hierarchies.

More detail can be found on the Wiki so please add comments so that we can ensure the functionality covers as many needs as possible.

I know this functionality will benefit many current Civi users and will also attract new users but… we need money to see it developed. Whether you’re a seed funder who can donate $1000s or a small organisation which can donate $20, it’s going to take lots of us to make this a reality, so please go to the Make It Happen page and donate what you can.

I’d value your comments (as well as your donations!) so please comment here, on the Wiki, or contact me by email. Thanks for your support.

Lindsey