It is very important for your members to know what is going on in the chapter. This will also allow for better participation and allow you to hold your members accountable. This is where the Engage area of MCR will benefit your chapter.
Chapter events should be entered into MCR as soon as they are planned. All information is important, but know that you can go back into the event at any time to make changes. It is important to make sure the correct event type is being chosen for your chapter as that will dictate how the system views the event, and this is the one element that cannot be edited once an event is created.
Things to decide as you are creating your event:
Is this a mandatory event and all members who are invited are expected to attend or a bonus event that is optional?
It is equally important that once an event is created, that an invite list is chosen. If this step is skipped, the event will not be highlighted on the members calendar and members will not be able to check into the event.
If this is a recurring event (like chapter meetings) that happens on a regular interval, using the recurring feature will make it much easier to accept excuses for Members who have to miss the event because of a recurring commitment (such as class), while still giving Members who only have to miss one (or a few) the option to only submit for those individual dates.
Best Practices:
Have a calendar planning session in the previous term
Put all chapter events including holidays and school events to make sure you are not over programmed
Allow your VP’s/Leadership to be responsible for their own events. Leaders can enter and edit their own events, they are just not able to cancel them
Set a date when all events should be entered on the MCR calendar
Alert your membership when this has been done
When changing a date, realize that members may have adjusted their schedule to be at the original event and you may get more excuses when an event is changed
Only the leader who created the event or an Admin can edit the event
If you have mandatory events that New Members need to attend, you will need to add the New Member group to the invite list after you have added them to MCR.
It is always best to add groups of Members (Committees, Lifetime Members, New Members etc.) to the invite list rather than trying to manually add individual Members because MCR will automatically include events on Members calendar if/when they become a part of a group that is invited to the event. (For example when New Members move to Lifetime Members)
If an event needs to be cancelled, an Administrator must cancel the event