The Problem: One Person Wants to Sign Up a Group for Multiple Slots

In many cases, you may need to allow one participant to sign up a group of people. Suppose you’re setting up an event where you have or need a finite number of resources. You need to sign up participants to either consume or provide more than one of those resources each, but you want to count each person against the limit.

Real-World Examples:

  • You have limited seating at an event, and you want to allow people to bring friends with them.
  • You only need 10 casseroles at the potluck, but you have some really motivated volunteers who want to bring 2 or 3 each.
  • You have 20 t-shirts left over, and you want to let people claim them for themselves and their family members.

The Solution: Use Block of Slots to Sign Up a Group with One Signup

Normally when someone signs up for a slot position in ivolunteer.com, they occupy 1 slot:  1 signup = 1 slot taken. But there is a way to let your participants sign up a group.

By using Block of Slots, you can let a sign up occupy more than just one slot: 1 signup = 1 or more slots taken (a.k.a. Block of Slots)

How It Works:

To create a block of slots, you will add a custom prompt to your event of type NUMBER or DROPDOWN. Custom prompts can be added from Event Details & Actions > Prompts > Add Prompt.

Option #1: Number Prompt

Note: When you check Block of Slots, the prompt will become required.

Select the Type “NUMBER”, check the Block of Slots box, and optionally set the minimum and maximum numbers.

Number prompt with Block of Slots option

In the example below, when Jon Doe signs up, he can enter the number of people coming including himself.

Signup for a block of slots

After Jon signs up, he will have taken 3 slots.

3 slots taken

Option #2: Dropdown Prompt

A DROPDOWN prompt works the same way except the number comes from the position in the list:

Dropdown prompt with Block of Slots option

Note: For a DROPDOWN you will want to make your descriptions correspond to the actual item numbers as we did here.   ‘Just me’ has the value 1, ‘Me and one other’ has the value 2, etc.

Now when Jon signs up he will see a descriptive list like the one below to choose from. The position of the item will decide how many slots he is signing up for.