How to run a pay-what-you-can church event without wrecking the budget

What is the difference between pay-what-you-can and a suggested donation?

A suggested donation is a number on a poster. Pay-what-you-can, as bindro implements it, is a priced place with a published floor, a published ceiling and a suggested amount that the form fills in for you. The person signing up can accept the suggestion, type something else inside the band, or — if your floor is zero — choose zero.

The practical difference is that the amount travels with the booking rather than with the collection plate. You know before the evening what has been committed, each amount is attached to a real place that consumed real capacity, and your reports separate what was paid for places from what was given on top.

What should the suggested amount be?

Start from what the event costs you per head, then set the suggestion slightly above it and the floor at zero or near it. If a parish supper costs $9 a head in food and hall hire, a suggestion of $12 with a band of nothing to $30 will usually cover the room: the households who can pay more than cost mostly do, and they are subsidising the ones who cannot, which is the arrangement you were making informally anyway.

Resist a high ceiling as a fundraising instrument. The ceiling exists to stop a mistyped amount — a household meaning $30 and typing $300 — not to capture generosity. Generosity belongs in the gift box, where no platform fee is charged on it and a receipt can be issued against your charity number.

• Work out cost per head honestly, including the hall and the people you pay.
• Set the suggested amount a little above cost per head, not at it.
• Set the floor at zero if you mean it. If you do not mean it, do not say it.
• Keep the ceiling sane — it is a typo guard, not an ask.
• Put the real ask in the gift box, separately, where a receipt can follow it.

What happens if somebody chooses zero?

They are signed up, and nobody at the door knows. An order that comes to nothing takes no payment and needs no card; the place is committed and the credential is issued exactly as for a household that paid the top of the band. The name list at the door carries names, not amounts.

This matters more than it sounds. The reason a household stays home from the parish supper is almost never the price on the poster; it is the prospect of a visible transaction at the door in front of people they see every week. Removing that moment is most of the value of running the event this way.

How do I stop the band being edited into something I did not publish?

You cannot send a price from a form and have bindro believe it. The band and the suggested amount live on the place you published; the person signing up sends a chosen number, and that number is checked against your band inside the same transaction that takes the money, against the values re-read under a lock at that moment. An amount below the floor, above the ceiling, or typed into an event that has no band at all is refused with the band named.

The same rule is why the fee arithmetic on your reports cannot drift from what was charged: the fee is derived from the amount that was actually taken, not from the list price the poster carried.

How should I explain it from the front?

In one sentence, before anyone opens the form: "Tickets are pay-what-you-can — the suggested amount is $12, and if that is not possible, choose whatever works, including nothing." Naming the floor out loud is what makes the floor usable. A band whose bottom is technically zero but never mentioned is a band whose bottom nobody takes.

Say who to speak to about hardship, and make it a person rather than a form. The engine will not have that conversation for you, and the assistant on this vertical is configured to route it to a human rather than attempt it.