The week-of event checklist

The product will not run the week for you. It will show who is on which date or slot, how many spots remain, and whether someone used their unregister link. This is the checklist that uses that information. Adjust the days if your event is not on a Saturday.

Monday: read the roster as a stranger

Open the public page and the dashboard. Confirm the title, time, location, and description still match the room you reserved. If the gym moved, edit the instance. Do not rely on a comment in a group chat.

• Which slots are empty that you cannot run without?
• Is anyone listed twice?
• Is capacity higher than the room?
• Did someone unregister since Friday?

Message the empty critical slots by name. A public blast of “still need help!!” fills the easy jobs first.

Wednesday: freeze the plan

If a job will not fill, change the plan in the product. Delete the slot or lower your ambitions. Adding a new slot on Thursday because you thought of “parking” is fine; adding six new jobs is how Saturday morning becomes chaos.

Confirm a second teammate can open the sign-up. If you get sick, they need the team dashboard, not a screenshot you texted in February.

Check notification settings on your account if you want email or SMS reminders, including the optional text 30 minutes before the instance. That reminds people who already signed up. It does not recruit.

Friday: one source of truth

Download or print the roster only if the venue has poor service. Tell other organizers that adds and drops after this print still happen on the live page. If you must take a paper walk-up list, give one person the job of typing those names into open slots before the next shift.

Send the event URL one last time to anyone who said they would sign up and did not. Do not create a second sign-up “because they couldn’t find the first one” until you have watched them open the original link.

Morning of: capacity and no-shows

Refresh the page. If someone unregistered overnight, that slot is open. If a critical person texts “can’t come,” remove them so the count matches reality. Walk-ups go into open capacity. If you accept extra people, raise capacity first so the page and the room agree.

There is no waitlist. If you kept names in email, you are running a manual list. Call them in order and add them yourself.

After the last shift

Leave the instances in place. Notes about what failed belong in the next instance’s description or in the slot template, not in a document nobody will open. If this was a one-off, you can leave the sign-up unpublished (listing off) so old links still show history but Search does not keep promoting it.

Pair this list with running a volunteer event if the week-of pain is really a poorly designed board.