Guidelines for Men's Retreat Registration

The outline below provides guidelines on how to handle registration for the annual District Men's Retreat.

The process assumes the availability of a personal computer with color printer to accomplish the work. Applications needed are:

• MS Excel - to track registrations
• Graphics or label program with mail merge capabilities, such as MS Word, WordPerfect, PrintMaster or PrintShop - to make name tags.

Save the receipts for all postage, printing, envelopes, etc. to be remitted to the District office for reimbursement after retreat.

Electronic lists of previous attendees and District churches addresses are available from Fred Young.

The following supplies are necessary to conduct these tasks.

• 1-2 reams 8.5" x 11" copier paper
• 1 box of 100 envelopes 9" x 13"
• 1 floppy diskette
• 100-200 #10 envelopes
• Self-adhesive mailing labels 1" x 2-13/16", such as Avery 5354
• Self-adhesive address labels 3-1/3" x 4", such as Avery 8164
• 1 Manila File folder

At the July leadership team meeting the team will establish:

• Retreat theme
• Retreat facility cut-off date
• Registration cut-off date
• Registration fee for two nights and six meals
• Registration fee for one night and three meals (if that option is available)
• Optionally, establish a cut-off date for Early Bird registration. This feature encourages men to commit early and gives the Men's Committee some sense of the size of the group.

 Registration Procedures-

Generally, the men send checks, which may or may not cover more than one person. Currently, checks are made payable to: Mid-Atlantic District of the C&MA.

Keep track of registrations in a spreadsheet (I have been using Excel). I use the following table headings. You may choose something different. Some items seem redundant, but there is a purpose for this, as I also use Excel worksheets to create a mail merge list for printing name tags and address labels.

• Transaction Number - serial numbers used to identify registrants and help in sorting the data
• Last Name - of attendee
• First Name - of attendee
• Whole Name - First and Last names together
• Church - church affiliation listed on Registration form
• Check Number - number of the check remitted
• Amount - total amount remitted in the check (may be for more than one person)
• Date - date Registration form received
• Remitted By - person remitting check (may appear in multiple rows if payer covers additional persons
• Address - of attendee...use data on check for address (if check covers more than one person, list remitter first, then on subsequent rows, enter the other persons, if provided)
• City - of attendee
• State - of attendee
• Zip Code - of attendee
• Phone - telephone number of attendee...use number indicated on Registration form
• Remarks - enter other pertinent information such as special room requests
• Pastor - enter Y if registrant is a Pastor
• To District Office - date check was mailed to the District Office.

• Other columns I have used are for facilitation of "Early Bird" registrations involving give-aways.
• Postmark - from letter
• Item Desired - indicated on Registration form

Processing Registrations-

Make a manila file folder to keep all remittance documents. Label the folder RETREAT NNNN REGISTRATION where NNNN is the year of the retreat). You will be placing the envelopes, registration forms, spreadsheet printouts, checks, check photocopies, and backup diskette in the folder.

Have a floppy diskette on hand to use for backup of spreadsheet.

IMPORTANT: Tell the District Men's President and your family members the whereabouts of this folder. In case anything disastrous happens to you, they will be able to recover the information and pass along the registration process to someone else.

It is best to log submissions into the spreadsheet on a weekly basis, or as 10 or more accumulate. Over the entire registration period mail the checks to the District office in lots of about $1,500.00. This means 3-4 mailings, and one final mailing after retreat is over (there are usually several "late comers" who fail to send money by the postmark cutoff date, but have called expressing an interest in attending).

The scenario below depicts what occurs for one registration letter received. For this description, we will assume one person is registering himself.

• Open the spreadsheet so all information is available for review.
• Looking at the spreadsheet, enter the next TRANSACTION number available onto the outside of the letter. This number will be the one used for the person REMITTING payment. (There may be other names in the envelope. If so, they would be numbered sequentially directly after the REMITTERs number.)
• Enter the REMITTERs TRANSACTION number on the check. (If there is more than one check, number the others serially, and use these numbers in the spreadsheet, too, matching the checks with names you will be entering into the spreadsheet.)
• Fill the spreadsheet rows across, using the data on the check and the registration form.
• Save the spreadsheet.
• Backup the spreadsheet onto the floppy diskette.
• Staple the registration form to the back of the envelope. Retain the envelope in the Retreat 2000 Registration folder. Band all the letters together. I keep them in order by TRANSACTION number.
• Place the check in the folder.