Sell tickets for your fundraising dinner without commission

A fundraising dinner runs on thin margins. The sauce is homemade, the hall belongs to the parish and the volunteers work for free — every euro that sticks to ticket sales is a euro less for the club. Yet many ticketing platforms charge an amount or a percentage on every ticket sold. This article shows how to sell your tickets online without anything going to a platform per ticket, and what it does cost you.

Where the per-ticket money goes

When you sell tickets online, two parties charge something:

• the payment provider (Mollie, Stripe or Bancontact Pro) charges a fee per payment. You pay it on every online payment, in a web shop too;
• the ticketing platform often charges a fixed amount per ticket, a percentage of your revenue, or both.

The first is unavoidable and runs directly between you and your provider. The second is not. With Passavo there is no amount per ticket and no percentage of your revenue: you pay a fixed monthly amount, and you start on a free plan. Your visitors' money goes straight to your own account; we are not in between. The details are in Payouts and costs.

What the free plan covers

The free plan is permanent, and it is made for exactly this kind of evening:

• free events are unlimited;
• each event sells up to 100 paid tickets, and you run as many events a year as you like;
• the ticket shop, the scanning app and wallet passes are included;
• you need no card details to start.

Three small dinners in a year therefore stay free. The ceiling applies per event, not per year.

A complete example: the spaghetti night

The brass band holds a spaghetti night in the parish hall, with room for a hundred and fifty people. Adults pay 18 euros, children 10 euros, and anyone who cannot come but wants to help buys a support ticket for 5 euros.

1. In the back office, go to Sales → Events and click New event.
2. Fill in the name, the date, the location and the number of places.
3. Add three ticket types: Adult, Child and Support ticket, each with a price and a VAT rate.
4. Leave The same price at the desk as well switched on if you also sell at the door.
5. Click Create. Your event is in your ticket shop.

Allow fifteen minutes. The steps with screenshots are in the manual under Events.

One thing to know: the number of places is set on each ticket type separately. A hundred and fifty places with three ticket types is not a shared pool of a hundred and fifty. If you want one hard limit across all tickets together, sell with a single ticket type or keep an eye on the Sold column.

What your visitor gets

Your visitor picks their tickets, pays with the payment method they know and receives the tickets by email. If they like, they add the ticket to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet with one tap. At the door you scan the QR code with the scanning app, even when the network in the hall gives up.

You embed the shop as a block in your own website, or share the link in your newsletter and as a QR code on the poster. The day after the dinner, the event disappears from your shop by itself; the orders and scans stay in the back office. Next year you copy the event and only change the date and the prices.

And if you sell more than 100 tickets?

Then you have two options, and your sales do not stop on the spot: when you reach the ceiling, a grace period of 14 days starts first.

• Pay for that one event separately: €19.00, one-off, up to 2 times per calendar year.
• The Start plan for €9.00 a month: up to 3,000 paid tickets a year with no ceiling per event, plus the counter point of sale. Pausable during your quiet months.

All amounts are on the pricing page, excluding VAT.

Three tips that help your ticket sales

Build the transaction fee into your price. A surcharge on a payment by Bancontact, iDEAL or an ordinary consumer card is not allowed in the European Union. Set your ticket at 18.50 rather than at 18 euros with an "admin fee" on top.

Ask for each participant's name if you need a list. Switch on Name on the ticket for the ticket type, and you immediately have your list for the seating plan.

Start your advance sales early. The more tickets are sold in advance, the better you know how many kilos of spaghetti to cook and how many volunteers you need.

If there is a bar next to the food, read how cashless with a balance on the pass works, or see what Passavo does for clubs and associations.