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• Program Stages

  3. Forms

• Contact Info

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Maximizing Your Volunteers

• Volunteers (let alone Buddy volunteers) always seem to be in short supply, so the RSVP system will help you to best utilize your team.
• Knowing exactly how many Buddy Managers and Supervisors you need is vital!

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Note: disabilities make planning tricky. They won’t be perfect RSVP’ing and are liable to cancel even the day of! But this helps you and them to make support go smoothly.

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Features

Snapshot Overview

• A snapshot of every date + time combination over the next revolving 3 weeks shows how many VIP’s are attending and which type of support is needed.

Not enough volunteers?

• If you have more VIP’s than Buddy’s, Column G “VIP Registration Order” will help with prioritizing.

What about cancellations?

This form handles that too!

• They fill out the form and select “attending” to RSVP or cancel by selecting “cancelling”
• If they RSVP’d multiple participants in 1 submission and want to cancel some, but not all (1 kid gets sick, other 2 want to go), the form will not track this properly.
  • This is mentioned in the form to avoid confusion, so they’ll email your point of contact instead </aside>

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With Software (not recommended)

• If using Planning Center (or related software), all forms must be built inside your account.
  • These will not properly interact with our other resources, hence not recommended.

Click below for a simplified template with directions on field types etc.

Buddy RSVP Form (Software Template).pdf

Without Software (recommended)

Snapshot generator and cancellations feature only works with this Google Forms setup!

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RSVP System Setup

This takes 5 minutes. No technical skills needed.

You will set up two things in your own Google Drive:

1. Your church’s copy of the Buddy RSVP Form
2. Your church’s copy of the VIP RSVP Spreadsheet

Once connected, all Buddy requests will flow automatically into the spreadsheet and generate overviews for each service date/time.

***Make sure it’s your church, not personal Google account

STEP 1 — Make a copy of the Buddy RSVP Form

1. Click the Buddy RSVP Form link below.

2. Google will open a message saying “Make a copy?”

3. Click “Make a copy.”

4. Rename it to something like:

   Buddy RSVP Form - YourChurchName

5. Add ministry contact email in description and Question #3

6. Change Service Times in Question #4

This form now lives in your Google Drive and belongs fully to your church.

STEP 2 — Make a copy of the Buddy RSVP Spreadsheet

1. Click the spreadsheet link below:

2. Click “Make a copy.”

3. Rename it to:

   VIP RSVP Overview - YourChurchName

DO NOT edit formulas or structure — everything is already set up for you.

STEP 3 — Connect your Buddy RSVP Form to your Buddy RSVP Spreadsheet

This is the most important step.

1. Open your newly-copied Buddy RSVP Form - YourChurchName

2. Click the Responses tab at the top

3. Click the small green Sheets icon

4. Choose “Select existing spreadsheet”

5. Pick the spreadsheet you copied in Step 2:

   VIP RSVP Overview - YourChurchName

6. Click Select

Google Forms will automatically:

• Create a tab inside the sheet called “Form Responses 1” (DO NOT CHANGE THIS!)
• Send every new Buddy request into that tab
• Trigger the overview to update automatically

Your setup is complete!

STEP 4 — Test your setup (takes 10 seconds)

1. Open your Buddy RSVP Form - YourChurchName
2. Submit a test entry (any example data is fine)
3. Open your VIP RSVP Overview - YourChurchName
4. Go to the tab called “Buddy RSVP Overview”
5. You should now see the data fill in automatically

If you see the test information correctly, the system is fully active.

STEP 5 — Add requests anytime

Just use the form normally.

You do not need to set anything else up.

Each new submission automatically feeds into the overview.

No manual typing. No spreadsheet editing. No tech work needed.

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