Its no secret that the world has become spoiled by having the Internet be the one definitive location to find anything you are looking for. Finding events to attend is not excluded from the list of conveniences the internet brings. Your small organization can use some mega online resources to help reach the same audience that larger organizations reach when promoting and managing their events. This article will show you how your small nonprofit or association can provide online registration (which most attendees come to expect now), how to promote your upcoming event, and how to get feedback on your event all like the big organizations do!

Part One: Credit Card Processing for Small Nonprofits and Associations
If you are going to be providing online payments for your upcoming event registrations, than the first thing you need to do is choose an online payment processing gateway. When talking about the cost of accepting credit cards online, all the providers of such services usually talk in terms of per transaction costs.

There are a few big companies out there which are competing right now in the payment processing services, which essentially means cheaper prices for your organization per transaction. The two main services that your organization will probably want to check out are Google Checkout and PayPal. You can create an account for your organization on either of these sites without being charged a thing, until of course you start taking payments.

Google Checkout is a newer player, but seems to be undercutting the price for PayPal at the time this article was written. If your organization chooses to accept credit cards through Google Checkout, you will be charged 2% of the transaction fee as well as an additional $0.20 per transaction. One benefit to selecting Google Checkout if you are a nonprofit organization is that they will provide free transactions until 2009 for donations to your organization.

PayPal is the other alternative, and while a bit more expensive for your organization to use, customers generally are comfortable with the PayPal name. While the prices vary depending on how much the event tickets will cost, the general price for your organization is 2.9% per transaction as well as $0.30 for each transaction. For the most up-to-date prices, click here.

Part Two: Event Registration Services
While you won't be able to ask any fancy questions through the registration process, eventbrite will at least be able to quickly set up an online form that will allow you to process credit card transactions in order to receive a ticket for the event. The cost to use eventbrite to handle your registration page is again calculated at a percentage of the registration fee. At the time of this writing, eventbrite will charge 2.5% of the total transaction or a maximum of $9.95 per transaction.

Part Three: Promote Your Event
There are a few sites that you can use to promote that your event will be taking place. Eventbrite already gives you access to some promotion avenues, but the following other avenues will help individuals see when your event is occurring.

• Upcoming: Upcoming does one thing, and it does it well. It helps individuals find events they are interested in attending in their area. Hence, this is a perfect way to promote your event for the area it will be occurring in.
• Facebook: If your organization isn't already on facebook, this may not be as effective. If your organization is on facebook, or knows someone that is well connected in facebook, have them create an event in facebook.
• Idealist: Idealist is a site that allows nonprofits to connect. You have the opportunity to post your organizations event on idealist and reach a number of individuals who are more than likely very interested in attending your event.