For benefit dinners, auctions and community fundraisers

Fundraiser seating, from ticket list to full tables.

Tickets sell in ones and twos, and the committee has one evening to make tables out of them. Import the ticket list, keep each party together, and hand the door a list of who sits where.

Use the fundraiser template

Free for up to 20 guests and 4 tables. No credit card required.

Spring Auction Dinner, Parish Hall
15 tables · 150 guests
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Table 472″ · 10 seatsJoanKellerBillKellerAishaGrantRayGrantLucyFernTomFern7NoraHale910Table 572″ · 10 seatsPeteWalshMiaWalshAnnChoLeoChoDoraSimsHalSimsIvyMoon910Party oftwo
How it works

Seat a fundraiser from the ticket export

Most of the work is grouping people who bought separately.

Export buyers from your ticketing or donation platform and import the spreadsheet. Every name comes in with its meal choice and dietary notes, ready to seat.

Spring Auction Dinner, Parish Hall
15 tables · 150 guests
Auto-saved
Fundraiser-specific

What a volunteer-run seating plan needs

Something the committee can pick up, finish in an evening and hand to the door.

From the ticketing export

Import the spreadsheet your ticketing or donation platform already gives you. No retyping two hundred names.

Parties stay together

A couple who bought two tickets, or four friends who bought together, get a keep-together rule, and the chart warns you before a move splits them.

Sightlines to the auction

Place the stage, the screen and the auction tables, and seat your most generous bidders where they can see and be seen.

The committee on one plan

Share a view-only link with every volunteer. On the Planner plan, up to three committee members can edit it with you.

Meals and dietary notes

Record each guest’s meal choice and dietary needs, and export them with every table for the caterer.

A check-in list for the door

Export the guest list as a spreadsheet with every table for the volunteers at check-in, and print the chart for the entrance.

Where to start

How to seat a fundraiser full of small parties

Start with the people who have a reason to be at a particular table: the honoree, the board, speakers, and anyone who donated an auction lot. Place them first, near the front.

Then group everyone else by what they have in common. Parents from the same school year, members of the same congregation, or neighbors from the same street make a table that talks all evening.

Mix your likely bidders through the room rather than putting them all at one table. A lively table in every section keeps the auction energy up across the hall.

Keep a few seats open until the last week. Fundraisers sell late, and a table with two spare chairs is easier to fill than a new table is to fit.

Helpful resources

See the whole plan

From ticket sales to a seated hall

The ticket list, the hall and every table in one plan the whole committee can open.

When a ticket sells the day before, or a family cancels, the volunteer holding the plan changes it in a minute and the door list follows.

Compared

PlanSeats and a spreadsheet passed around the committee

Most fundraisers are seated in a spreadsheet emailed between volunteers, with a table number typed next to each name. By the week of the event there are three versions and nobody is sure which is current.

PlanSeats keeps one plan, shows the hall, and counts the seats, so the committee argues about who sits together rather than which file is right.

Keep selling tickets on the platform you use now. Import the list here when it is time to seat people.

Questions

Fundraiser seating questions

Start your fundraiser seating plan

The ticket list, the hall and the auction in one plan, finished in an evening and ready for the door.

Free for up to 20 guests and 4 tables. No credit card required.