(Originally posted in Fundraising forum. Posting here to get more eyes.)
Hello,
We're testing out the use of AUX items in TNEW to sell tickets to our Gala. The idea would be to sell tickets to a shell performance, return the purchase to an On Acct payment method, then use the amount to process the contribution.
Has anyone has found a way to automate the return of the ticket purchase? If we can automate that part, then there won't be any additional work for our team. I thought maybe the Event Cancellation Utility could be used, but that would release those seats and we might potentially oversell if those seats become available again. Does anyone know of a way we can stop a ticket that has been purchased and returned from being sold again--essentially placing a blackout hold on the returned seat so it can't be bought again? Maybe there's an easy way to do this, but if there is, I'm not aware of it.
I'm also open to better ways to sell the EE tickets online, but we're trying to avoid the contribute1/2 pages.
Thanks in advance.
Michael Dorsey
We did something similar to that in September. We just waited until AFTER the gala/event occurred and used the Event Cancellation Utility to make them a contribution. I saved all the attendance data BEFORE running the utility. That way we had a way to look back at who showed up to the gala/event.
No, that won't work...it's too simple. (Kidding, of course.)
Neil, that's brilliant, and one of those rather obvious solutions that is easy to overlook when you're obsessing over the end result like I have been. Thanks for your help, as always. Now, to suggest this to the development team and see the reaction.
Thanks again!
Michael