One of the last tasks the outgoing leadership should finalize, is to plan for the Spring semester and create your chapter event calendar. Your knowledge from the last year will create the most successful calendar and will give your incoming leadership a good place to start. It also assists in your transition as the calendar discussion will facilitate many other conversations. Keeping your calendar updated ensures better participation and allows Members to be held accountable.
Best Practice: The outgoing leadership plans the Spring calendar now so it can be voted on and passed at the last chapter meeting of the term
You will create events using the DRAFT feature on the MCR calendar - this would be in place of creating your events in a different program, like google calendar, and then transferring them to MCR.
This can be done in either the website or the mobile app
These events appear on calendar with a bright blue outline and “DRAFT” ahead of event title
No notification is sent to Members
Admin leaders can bulk publish/approve events once finalized
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 for points, and this is the one element that cannot be edited once an event is created.
Chapter events can be associated with the position that creates the event; so an outgoing officer can create an event and when the leadership positions are changed, the event can be managed by the incoming officer.
Admin leaders/advisors can re-assign events to any leader within the chapter
Best Practice: Let the chapter know that they can view the proposed calendar in MCR, highlight key dates/events, and then have chapter vote on calendar to cultivate buy-in from chapter
Best Practice: Invite all groups of members that should be attending including the New Member group, even if there are no new members yet.
Consider
Is this a mandatory event and all members who are invited are expected to attend or a bonus event that is optional?
Will this be a self check-in or leader scan-in event? It is best to use leader scan-in for events where more than half of the chapter is expected to attend.
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.
Is this an event where you only have space for a certain number of Members or need Members to commit to attending in advance of the date? Utilize the RSVP feature on the event.
Once an event is created, who will need to be invited? An invite list must be selected when creating an event, and should be invited by group rather than individual. If this step is skipped, the event will show up grayed out on the member’s calendar and members will not be able to check into the event.
Reminders:
Set a date when all DRAFT events should be entered on the MCR calendar
Alert your membership when this has been done
Only the position assigned to the event, an Event Admin or an Admin can edit the event
If you have mandatory events that New Members need to attend, don’t forget to invite them even if there are no members in the group.
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 canceled, an Administrator is the only position who can cancel the event
Remind your members that they can sync to your chapters calendar by following these simple steps.