Families stay together
A party moves together, after a confirmation, and everyone in it is placed at the same table.
Use case: banquets and galas
Your banquet, handled. From the first invitation to the last thank-you.
Registration, table hosts, sponsors, paid or free spots, meal counts, seating, and live check-in for fundraising banquets and galas. Built with the faith-based nonprofits who run them.
Where the banquet lives today
Most of this is spread across different systems, and you are the one holding it together
None of these tools is wrong on its own. The problem is that the banquet is one night and they do not talk to each other, so the coordinator becomes the integration.
The night raises less than it should, and the follow-up that turns a first-time guest into a monthly donor never happens.
Book a Demo
See how a night like yours runs in one place.
The short answer
What software do nonprofits use to run a fundraising banquet?
FundEasy is fundraising software built for the banquets and galas that faith-based nonprofits actually run.
You set up a banquet or vision dinner, then FundEasy handles online registration, paid or free spots, table and sponsor packages, early bird pricing, promo codes, and offline payment. On events built from the Vision Dinner template, guests choose their table host when they register. Sponsors can complete a sponsor form themselves for your approval.
Meal choices and custom questions live on the registration form, so your caterer count comes straight from your registrations. On Seating, a group is placed at a table as a whole, everyone in a party is placed at the same table, and the layout prints as a PDF. On the night of, the Live Check-in app runs the door on an iPad.
Afterward you export an attendee roster, meal report, sponsor summary, and host report, and reconcile every payment in one dashboard.
Where the banquet lives
The night runs on the Events and Attendance module: registration, hosts, sponsors, seating, check-in, and reporting. For the full feature set, read the attendance and event management software page.
What runs around it
Giving Pages for the appeal you send after the event, Recurring Giving for the guests who say yes to monthly, and Peer-to-Peer when supporters raise money before anyone sits down. Same account, same records.
If you are a pregnancy center
Centers on the eKYROS EMR run their banquets on this same platform, with event participation and donation records syncing back to eKYROS.
Product in action
One night, start to finish
Set it up
Walk the setup wizard: dates, venue, attendance goal, capacity, theme, and the text on your registration page.
After the event, getting the reports, data, and follow-up you need is easy
- Event Summary
- Simple Attendee Roster
- Meal Choice Report
- Affiliation Summary
- Groups and Hosts
- Event Sponsor Summary
Book a Demo
Walk through these same screens with your goals in mind.
What changes when the whole night runs in one place
01
Fill the room through your table hosts
Host tools are on events built from the Vision Dinner template.
- Guests pick their host from a dropdown on the registration form.
- Make anyone a host in one click. A group can have no host, one host, or several. Remove a host and their group stays together.
- Host instruction emails are yours to edit, preview, and resend.
- A group is a flexible way to organize your attendees, often a host and the guests they bring. Groups & Hosts shows guests by group. On other events the screen is called Groups. Guests not in a group appear under Ungrouped.
02
Let sponsors sign themselves up
- Email a sponsor form with a preview first, or add sponsors yourself.
- Approve, hold, or reject what comes back before anything goes public.
- Approved sponsors and their tier descriptions show on the event page.
- Logo impressions and clicks are tracked, so renewal conversations have numbers in them.
03
Stop guessing at meals and seating
- Meal choice is a field on the registration form, with variants and optional caps per option.
- Your caterer count is a report, not a phone call and a best guess.
- On Seating, drag a group or guest onto a table, or click a guest and then a table. Everyone in a party is placed at the same table.
- Table colors show Empty, Seats open, Full, and Over capacity.
04
Take payment for tables and spots, then know exactly where the money is
- Early bird and late pricing tiers that switch on the dates you set.
- Secure checkout for registrations, tables, and sponsorships.
- Bill Me Later for the supporters who will always pay by check.
- One dashboard for ticket revenue, pending payments, and payouts, with refunds when plans change.
Organizations running their banquet this way
Numbers from customers who have run this night many times
Using Live Attendance streamlined the check-in process and saved me hours of time.
The plan
How a banquet runs on FundEasy
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Step one
Set up the banquet
Run a banquet or vision dinner, then walk through the setup wizard.
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Step two
Open registration, set pricing, turn on hosts and sponsors
Invite your list, schedule early bird and late pricing, and send sponsor forms. On events built from the Vision Dinner template, guests choose their host when they register.
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Step three
Build the room
On Seating, place a group or guest at a table, print name tags by table or last name, and pull the meal count.
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Step four
Run the night, then run the follow-up
Live Check-In uses one iPad as the Hub and a second iPad to check guests in and register walk-ins. Add more iPhones or iPads as extra check-in stations. Then the attendee roster, sponsor summary, host report, and payments reconciliation the next morning.
Next year, duplicate the event and start from everything you already built.
The money side
Every way money comes in, in one ledger
- Early bird and late pricing
- Set your tiers and the dates they take effect. Pricing switches on its own.
- Secure checkout
- Paid registrations, tables, and sponsorships, processed through Stripe.
- Bill Me Later
- Offline payment coordination with instructions and tracking, for the donors who mail a check.
- Offline transactions
- Record cash, check, and wire gifts, attach them to a contact and optionally to a giving page or a peer-to-peer participant, and they count in totals and leaderboards like online gifts.
- Refunds and cancellations
- Full or partial refunds on online orders.
- Payments dashboard
- Ticket revenue, pending payments, and order detail per event, plus an account-level view across every event and giving page.
- Payouts dashboard
- Payout history, with each payout tied back to the transactions that made it up.
Book a Demo
We’ll walk you through the payments side with your registration prices in mind.
The night
Run every kind of event
Run every kind of event, from banquets and vision dinners to walks and golf outings.
Host tools are on events built from the Vision Dinner template. Guests choose their host on the registration form, and the Host Dashboard shows every host’s invited and registered counts.
Add peer-to-peer
Let supporters raise money before anyone sits down
- Registration prompts people to create their own fundraising page when they register.
- The Peer-to-Peer for Event giving page template is built for a walk, run, or banquet, with individual pages, teams, an optional goal meter and leaderboard, tied to the event date.
- Teams let participants fundraise together while each person's own effort still shows.
- Pledges track what a donor has committed but not yet paid, logged by the participant or by an admin.
- Participants set their own page title and banner and can embed a YouTube or Vimeo video.
See a real banquet set up end to end
Tell us about the event closest on your calendar. In thirty minutes we’ll walk you through registration, hosts, sponsors, seating, and check-in with your goals in mind.
Everything the banquet can use
Select any capability to read what it does.
Choose any capability to read what it does.
This release
Built from what you told us
Hosts stay put
Hosts stay put when a registration is edited.
No duplicates
Whole groups are placed at a table at once, so the same guests are not seated twice.
Change once
Change a guest once, and Attendees, Groups & Hosts, and Seating all update.
Questions
Banquet and gala questions
Still deciding? Bring your event to a demo and we will answer these against your own night.
What software do nonprofits use to run a fundraising banquet?
FundEasy runs the whole banquet from one event: registration for paid or free spots, table hosts on events built from the Vision Dinner template, sponsors, meal choices, Seating, live check-in, and the reports afterward. It is built for the table-host dinner that faith-based nonprofits, ministries, Christian schools, and pregnancy centers run, rather than for a metro auction gala. Giving pages, crowdfunding, recurring giving, and peer-to-peer run on the same account, so the guests you meet at the banquet are the same records you appeal to in December.
How do table hosts work, and can guests choose their host?
Yes, on events built from the Vision Dinner template. A Select Host Name dropdown on the public registration form lets a guest pick the person who invited them. Make anyone a host in one click. A group can have no host, one host, or several. Remove a host and their group stays together. Guests are arranged on Groups & Hosts, and on other events that screen is called Groups. The Groups & Hosts report includes guests no host has claimed. The Host Dashboard shows each host's invited and registered counts at a glance.
Can sponsors sign up and pay through the event page?
Yes. Sponsors work with every event, and you set the sponsor tiers. Sponsorship payments run through the same secure Stripe checkout as paid registration, and sponsors show on the event page with their tier. You can also add a sponsor yourself and record a payment made by check or wire.
How do we handle meal choices and dietary restrictions?
Meal choice is a field on the registration form. You set the options, add variants, and cap the quantity of any option if the kitchen can only make so many. Dietary needs and anything else you need to ask go in custom questions: short answer, long answer, dropdown, multiple choice, checkbox, date and time, or number, each with helper text. Both flow into the Meal Choice Report, so the number you send the caterer comes from what guests actually selected.
What if our banquet fills up?
Registration closes on its own when you reach the event capacity you set, and you write the message people see once it's closed. If the venue can add tables, raise the capacity to open more spots, then add the tables to your seating chart. FundEasy doesn't have a built-in waitlist today. To keep one, add a registration type called “Waitlist” and hide your other registration types, so new sign-ups join the waitlist. Email that group from the event when seats open up.
Can we take payment online, and what about people who pay by check?
Yes to both. Paid registrations, tables, and sponsorships go through secure Stripe checkout, with early bird and late pricing that switch on the dates you set, plus promo codes. For supporters who mail a check, Bill Me Later records the order, sends payment instructions, and tracks it until it clears, and cash, check, and wire gifts can be entered as offline transactions that count in your totals. Full and partial refunds are available on online orders, though Stripe's processing fee is not returned when a payment is refunded.
How does check-in work on the night of the event?
Your team checks guests in at the door with the Live Check-In app, and the count lands on your event dashboard as people arrive. You need two iPads: one runs the Hub app, and the second runs the Check-In app to check guests in and register walk-ins. Extra iPhones or iPads can join as more check-in stations, and Live Check-In runs on Apple devices only. Because check-in is tied to the registration record, the next morning you have a clean list of who came and which host brought them.
How much does it cost to run a banquet on FundEasy?
FundEasy is $1,500 a year, or $150 a month, on a one-year term. Pregnancy centers are $999 a year, or $100 a month. Events are unlimited on every plan, so a second dinner or a spring walk does not change your plan. On online payments, FundEasy charges a 0.7% platform fee per transaction, and Stripe's processing fee is separate under your own Stripe agreement. Guests and donors can also choose to cover processing fees when they pay. See pricing or book a demo.