If you’ve clicked on “Storefront Classes” from the Lost Art Press blog in the last few days, you’ve no doubt noticed that “Covington Mechanicals” (what we call our not-school) has no “live events” at the moment. That’s because we ran afoul of the EventBrite policies, and that platform has no solution that works for us (I asked).

So I’m being a lazy git and asking if you have an event-management solution suggestion that works for our semi-odd situation…other than simply having folks send me emails (which I fervently hope is not the only viable answere…but it might be).

In short – and as I’ve said before – we’re not a school. That is, we don’t pay the instructors – each instructor does her or his own billing, and using various payment portals. In order to be acceptable on EventBrite, an event has to either be free (which is where we’d listed ours, with a note in the copy that attendees would be billed by the instructor), or the payment has to go through the EventBrite system, for which the site takes a cut, of course. But we can’t do that…because then all the money would flow through one of us, which could be a tax problem.

My wish list:

1. A site on which people can register (with name, email and phone number) for a fee-based class, but on which no money must flow through said site for the class (again, so that instructors can handle billing via their preferred system, be that PayPal, Cash, cash, check…)
2. A site that allows a cap on registration, then offers waitlist signup
3. A site that sends an email to the registrant that says, “Yes, you’re in,” or, as needed “you’re on the waitlist.”
4. The functionality of sending an email to a waitlist participant from said waitlist (not my email) if a spot opens, and that limits the time in which the person must respond.
5. Ideally, a site that allows us to charge a small up-front registration fee, then allows us to say an invoice for $XX will come from the instructor (the instructors have been paying us this nominal amount for said registration fee during the past year – it’s basically enough to cover glue, pastries, water and electric)
6. A site/service that doesn’t cost much (again, we make almost nothing off classes unless we’re the instructor, and don’t want to pass on any additional overhead costs to you or the few outside instructors we’ll have next year).

Non-headache-inducing suggestions are welcome below.