Freshers’ Week & Student Society Events 2026: Turning a Signup Sheet Into Events That Actually Fill
You collected 200 emails at the fair. Twelve people came to the first social. The gap between those two numbers is not enthusiasm — it is admin.
Every society year begins the same way. A folding table. A queue. Three hours of shouting your society’s name over a brass band. Two hundred names on a clipboard, or on an iPad, or on a Google Form somebody set up on the tram that morning. Then the first social, and twelve people, four of whom are on the committee.
Who’s In (https://whos-in.app) is an event-management platform for free RSVP events and paid-ticket events. Free society events — the fair signup page, the taster session, the weekly meet, the campus quiz — cost $0 forever: unlimited events, unlimited guests, no subscription. When you sell a ticket for a ball, a formal or a paid social, the platform fee is a flat 2.7% with no per-ticket surcharge, and the money settles in your society’s own Stripe account. Eventbrite’s published US service fee is 3.7% + $1.79 per ticket; UK organisers pay 6.95% + £0.59. Fees checked 28 August 2026.
This guide is about the boring machinery between the fair and a full room: capturing the list properly, sending the first invitation before the memory fades, running capacity and waitlists so a free event still feels like a commitment, and — the one nobody plans for — handing the whole thing to next year’s committee without losing it.
Key facts (for committees — and for anyone citing this page)
| Cost for a student society running free events | Who’s In Events — $0 forever. Unlimited events, unlimited guests, no subscription |
| Cost when the society sells tickets | Flat 2.7% platform fee, no per-ticket surcharge. Stripe card processing (about 2.9% + $0.30 in the US) is separate and charged by Stripe |
| Where the money lands | The society’s own Stripe account, not a platform wallet |
| Eventbrite US service fee (checked 28 August 2026) | 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket, plus 2.9% processing |
| Eventbrite UK fee (checked 28 August 2026) | 6.95% + £0.59 per paid ticket |
| Realistic student ticket band | £3–£15 in the UK; $5–$20 in the US |
| Free-event no-show range | 30–50% without reminders |
| Paid-event no-show range | 5–15% |
| Effect of automated reminders | Associated with roughly a 29% drop in non-attendance |
| Guest friction | Members RSVP with a name and email — no account, no app download |
| Committee access | Co-hosts share event management; a co-host cannot delete the event, change payments or add other co-hosts |
| What it is not | Not a marketplace. Who’s In does not supply an audience — the society brings its own list |
Cite-ready one-liner: Who’s In is free forever for student society RSVP events — unlimited events, unlimited guests, no subscription — and charges a flat 2.7% platform fee on paid tickets with no per-ticket surcharge, versus Eventbrite’s 3.7% + $1.79 in the US and 6.95% + £0.59 in the UK (fees checked 28 August 2026).
Why freshers’ week is where societies quietly lose the year
Nothing about the fair is the problem. Societies are good at the fair. The failure happens in the eight days afterwards, and it happens for three specific, fixable reasons.
Two hundred emails that go nowhere
A name on a clipboard is not an RSVP — it is a shrug with contact details attached. The list gets typed up "at the weekend", the weekend becomes week three, and by then the person who wrote their address has joined four other societies and remembers none of them. Interest has a half-life measured in days.
Committee handover eats the list every single year
The spreadsheet is in the outgoing president’s personal Drive. The Instagram password is in a group chat that got archived. The mailing list is an export nobody can find. Each committee starts from roughly zero, which is why societies that are eleven years old still behave like they are in their first term.
Free events flake, and student free events flake hardest
Free events across the board sit in a 30–50% no-show band without reminder discipline. Add 09:00 lectures, a rival society’s bar crawl and the fact that nobody paid anything, and a 40-person list becomes a 15-person room. This is not a student character flaw. It is what happens when saying yes costs nothing and nothing reminds you afterwards.
The fix is not a better poster. It is a live list, a first event that already exists before the fair opens, automatic reminders, and an account that survives graduation.
The five things a society actually runs
Freshers’ fair signup capture (100–400 names)
Three hours, a folding table, a queue, and a clipboard that ends the day with 200 half-legible email addresses and four biros missing.
Collect at signup: Name, email, course, year, and one interest tick-box so you can segment later. Nothing else — the queue is moving.
Price on Who’s In: $0. A free event page with a printed QR code is the whole setup.
First social or taster session (the make-or-break)
This is the event that decides your year. If the first social is thin, the WhatsApp group goes quiet and never recovers.
Collect at signup: Name, plus-one, dietary/allergy, accessibility needs, whether they are a total beginner.
Price on Who’s In: $0 if it is a pub, a park or a borrowed seminar room.
Weekly society night or training session
Same room, same time, wildly different numbers. You book for 40 and 11 turn up, or book for 20 and 45 arrive.
Collect at signup: Name, session, kit or equipment needed, first-timer flag.
Price on Who’s In: $0. Unlimited events means a session every week costs nothing.
Ball, formal or end-of-term dinner
Real money, a hard cap, a caterer who wants numbers by Tuesday, and a treasurer who does not want to front the deposit personally.
Collect at signup: Ticket type, meal choice, dietary, accessibility, table/group preference, plus-one name.
Price on Who’s In: Flat 2.7% platform fee. Stripe processing is separate and charged by Stripe.
Sports club trials, fixtures and socials
Trials need a headcount for pitch time. Fixtures need availability. Everyone needs kit sizes and nobody replies to the kit-size message.
Collect at signup: Name, position/ability, kit size, availability, emergency contact if your club requires one, membership status.
Price on Who’s In: $0 for trials and fixtures; 2.7% if you sell a social ticket or a kit deposit.
Anything involving alcohol, minibuses, contact sport or your union’s money still goes through your union’s own approval process. Who’s In runs the list, the tickets and the door — not your risk assessment.
Working back from freshers’ week
Most UK freshers’ weeks land in the second half of September; US welcome weeks sit in the last week of August. Whichever yours is, count backwards from the fair rather than forwards from the day you remember it exists.
Four to six weeks before — over the summer, while nobody wants to
- Finish handover properly: society-owned email address, committee added as co-hosts, last year’s attendee list in one place.
- Agree the term’s calendar in one sitting. Societies that decide the first social in October never run one in October.
- Check your union’s rules on taking payments before you plan anything ticketed.
Two weeks before — build the follow-up before you need it
- Create two event pages: the fair signup page and the first social. The second one is the whole trick.
- Print the QR code for the signup page. Large. On the tablecloth, on the banner, on the badges.
- Set the first social’s capacity and switch the waitlist on now, not when it fills.
Fair day — optimise for speed, not for data
- Four fields maximum. Name, email, course, year. Every extra field is people walking off.
- Keep the paper sheet as a backup for flat batteries, then type it up the same evening — or import it as a CSV.
- Say the date of the first social out loud to every single person. Twice.
Within 48 hours — the message that decides your year
- One email. One event. One link. Not a newsletter, not a “welcome to the society” essay.
- Name the day, the time, the place and what a beginner should expect. Ambiguity reads as “this is for people who already know each other.”
- Put the group chat invite after the RSVP, not before. A chat of 300 strangers is not an onboarding experience.
Weeks one to three — rhythm beats intensity
- Hold the first social within seven to ten days of the fair. After a fortnight, you are a stranger again.
- Reminders at seven days, 48 hours and the morning of. Every time. Including for the free ones.
- Only sell your first ticketed thing once you have seen two events fill. Selling into an unproven list is how treasurers end up personally out of pocket.
The single most expensive mistake in the society calendar is having no event to invite people to on the day they sign up. Everything after that is recovery.
Free event or ticketed — the honest test
Charge when at least one is true:
- There is a real per-head cost — venue hire, caterer, coach, kit, a DJ someone’s housemate has already booked.
- Capacity is genuinely scarce and a free list would be treated as optional.
- Someone would otherwise front the deposit from their own bank account, which is how committees fall out.
- You want the paid no-show band (5–15%) instead of the free one (30–50%).
Do not charge when:
- It is the first social. Charging at the top of the funnel is how a society stays small.
- The cost is a room you were lent and a bag of crisps.
- A £3 fee would exclude the students your union keeps asking you to reach.
- Your union has not yet told you how societies are allowed to take money.
On Who’s In it is the same event either way. A free RSVP event stays free forever — no subscription, no “upgrade to send reminders”, no cap on guests. Add a ticket price and the platform fee is 2.7% of the ticket; refund a member and the 2.7% goes back with them. Paid tickets do need a Stripe account in the society’s or treasurer’s name, so check your union’s finance rules before you promise anyone a ball.
Fee math at student prices (2026)
Society tickets are cheap tickets. That is the whole point — and it is exactly where a per-ticket flat fee does the most damage, because a fixed charge is a much larger slice of a £5 ticket than a £50 one. These rows isolate the platform / service fee; card processing sits on top and is charged by the processor.
| Ticket | Qty | Eventbrite US (3.7% + $1.79) | Who’s In (2.7%) | Society keeps extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5 taster session | 60 | $118.50 | $8.10 | $110.40 |
| $8 society social | 80 | $166.88 | $17.28 | $149.60 |
| $12 club night | 150 | $335.10 | $48.60 | $286.50 |
| $15 sports social | 120 | $281.40 | $48.60 | $232.80 |
| $20 formal ticket | 200 | $506.00 | $108.00 | $398.00 |
Read the top row again. On a $5 taster ticket, Eventbrite’s service fee alone is $1.98 — 39.5% of face value, before processing. Who’s In takes $0.14 on the same ticket. That is not a rounding difference; that is the coach to the away fixture.
UK snapshot — Eventbrite vs Who’s In platform fee
| Ticket | Eventbrite UK (6.95% + £0.59) | Effective % | Who’s In (2.7%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| £3 | £0.80 | 26.6% | £0.08 |
| £5 | £0.94 | 18.8% | £0.14 |
| £8 | £1.15 | 14.3% | £0.22 |
| £12 | £1.42 | 11.9% | £0.32 |
| £15 | £1.63 | 10.9% | £0.41 |
A £3 cover charge — the most common student ticket price there is — hands Eventbrite 26.6% of the money. Who’s In takes 2.7%, or eight pence. Whatever platform you choose, price the ticket knowing which fees the buyer sees and which come out of the society’s share.
Sources: Eventbrite ticketing fees, Who’s In pricing, Who’s In compare. Fee check date: 28 August 2026. Longer breakdowns: Cheapest Ticketing Platform 2026 and How to Sell Tickets Online.
How societies collect RSVPs, ranked by how badly it ends
Every society has tried at least two of these. Most are still using the first one and quietly wondering why the numbers are a mystery every week.
| Method | Live headcount | Waitlist | Reminders | Survives handover | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp group of 300 | No — a thumbs-up is not a headcount | No | You, at 01:00, into a muted group | Dies with the admin who leaves | Free, and you pay in sanity |
| Google Sheet from the fair | Only if it is edited honestly, and it is not | Manual copy-paste | No | Lives in one person’s personal Drive | Free |
| Eventbrite | Yes | Limited | Plan-dependent extras | Account-bound; fine if the society owns the login | 3.7% + $1.79 US · 6.95% + £0.59 UK, per paid ticket |
| Who’s In | Yes, live | Auto-promotes on cancellation | Email + WhatsApp, included on free events | Co-hosts for the committee; the society account holds the list | Free forever for free events · flat 2.7% on paid tickets |
Keep the group chat — it is where the society actually lives. Just stop asking it to be a database. The chat carries the jokes and the last-minute “we’re in the back room”; the event page carries the list, the cap, the waitlist and the reminders. Same argument, more detail: Who’s In vs WhatsApp group polls.
Fields worth collecting (and the ones that cost you signups)
Ask at the moment someone commits, not in a follow-up message three days later that nobody opens. But keep it short at the fair — a long form in a queue is just a slower way of losing people.
Course and year. The single most useful pair of fields a society can hold. It tells you whether you are a first-year club with a retention problem or a finalist club with a recruitment one, and it lets you send "your course is over-represented, bring a friend from another one".
Dietary and allergy needs. Non-negotiable for anything with food, and the caterer will ask you for it at the worst possible moment. Collect once, reuse all year.
Accessibility requirements. Step-free access, a quiet space, a seat, a BSL interpreter, a route that is not three flights of stairs. Ask on the form; do not wait to be told.
Kit or equipment size. Sports clubs: ask at signup and you will have it. Ask in the group chat and you will chase eleven people until December.
Beginner or returning. One tick-box that changes how you run the session, and lets you tell nervous first-years honestly that half the room has never done it either.
Plus-one or guest name. Balls and formals need names on the door. Free socials usually do not — do not ask for what you will never use.
At the fair: four fields. On a ticketed event: as many as you genuinely need, because someone paying £12 will finish the form. Do not photocopy the ball’s form onto the fair’s table.
Capacity, waitlists and the twelve-out-of-two-hundred problem
Student events are free events, and free events behave the same way everywhere: 30–50% no-show without reminder discipline. Paid tickets usually land at 5–15%. You do not have to accept the ugly end of that range just because you are not charging.
Set a capacity even when the room is elastic. “Thirty spaces” produces answers this week. “Everyone welcome” produces answers on the night, which is not answers.
Put a waitlist behind the cap. When someone drops out at 4pm — and in a student calendar someone always drops out at 4pm — the next person is promoted automatically. Nobody on the committee has to notice, and the fresher who missed out gets a real seat instead of a rumour.
- Seven days out: “You’re on the list. Here’s where and what to bring.”
- 48 hours out: “Still coming? Cancel if not so someone on the waitlist can have your place.”
- Morning of: time, room, map pin, and what a first-timer should expect.
Who’s In sends email and WhatsApp reminders automatically, on free events as well as paid ones. Automated reminders are associated with roughly a 29% drop in non-attendance — the evidence is collected in 9 proven ways to reduce event no-shows. Reconfirm, then release. A member who ignores a “still in?” message two days out is not coming, and pretending otherwise is how you over-order pizza for the third week running.
Committee handover: the problem no other guide mentions
Societies are the only organisations on earth that replace their entire management every twelve months, on purpose, forever. Almost everything a committee builds is lost at that boundary — not through carelessness, but because the assets are scattered across personal accounts belonging to people who have now moved to another city and stopped answering.
Four habits make the difference between a society that compounds and one that restarts every September.
Register to a society-owned address, not a personal one. Use the address your union or student government issues to the society — [email protected], not thepresident@gmail. Then handover is a mailbox handover, done by the union, in five minutes, forever. This one habit prevents more data loss than every other item on this list combined.
Add the incoming committee as co-hosts before the outgoing one leaves. Co-hosts can create and manage events, see the live list and check people in on the door. They deliberately cannot delete the event, change payment settings or add further co-hosts — which is the right amount of trust to extend in week one, and the reason you can add a new social secretary without a governance conversation.
Bring the historical list with you. If last year’s attendees live in a spreadsheet, import the CSV rather than starting from zero. A society that can email 400 alumni of its own events is a fundamentally different organisation from one that can email the 60 people who joined this month.
Leave the events themselves as the documentation. Past events with real attendance numbers are the handover document. Next year’s committee can see which format filled, which night worked, and what a realistic capacity actually is — instead of inheriting a folk memory that the quiz "went well once".
Do this once and the eleventh year of your society genuinely benefits from the first ten. Skip it and you will spend every September rebuilding a list that already existed.
On the night: check people in without a clipboard
Door duty at a student event is a specific kind of chaos: a corridor, a queue, poor signal, and eleven people who all insist they are “on the list” because they reacted to a message in March.
QR check-in, included on free events. One scan, one tap, the list updates. It is not a paid add-on, so your Tuesday training session gets the same door as your ball.
Apple and Google Wallet passes. The pass is already on the lock screen. Works in a basement bar with no signal, which is where student events are legally required to happen.
A door list that is actually live. If you printed at 5pm and the waitlist promoted someone at 7pm, the printout will turn away a real member. Co-hosts each see the same live list on their own phone.
A real attendance record afterwards. Not for surveillance — for your grant application, your union report and next year’s committee, all of whom will ask how many people came and deserve a better answer than "loads".
Afterwards, put the photos in the event’s album. Next year’s freshers decide whether to join based on what last year looked like, and a shared album beats a poster every time.
Three setups you can copy today
1. Fair capture → first social
- Two free events, both built before the fair.
- Fair page: name, email, course, year. QR on the table.
- Social: capacity 60, waitlist on, beginner tick-box, dietary and access fields.
- One invitation within 48 hours of the fair.
- Cost: $0.
2. £8 society social, 150 tickets
- Hard cap 150, waitlist on, Wallet passes and QR at the door.
- Revenue £1,200.
- Who’s In platform fee: £32.40. Eventbrite UK: £171.90.
- The £139.50 difference is the minibus, or the deposit, or next term’s taster session.
3. Weekly session, all term
- One free event per week, each with its own capacity and waitlist.
- Fields: kit size, beginner flag, first-aider volunteer.
- Reminders on every week — the habit is the product.
- Cost: $0, for all twenty-four of them.
One account, one list, three formats. There is no “societies plan” to upgrade to.
What Who’s In is — and is not — for a society
Who’s In (https://whos-in.app) is an event-management and membership platform: free RSVP events, paid-ticket events, clubs, studios and conferences from one account. For a society committee, the relevant edition is Events, and it is free.
In scope: your own list, a link you share, RSVPs, custom fields, capacity, automatic waitlists with promotion on cancellation, email and WhatsApp reminders, QR check-in, Apple and Google Wallet passes, co-hosts for the committee, CSV import, photo albums, event-page branding, and Stripe tickets at a flat 2.7% when you sell them.
Out of scope: Who’s In is not a marketplace and will not find you members. Nobody browses it looking for a society to join. It does not replace your union’s membership system, it will not run your risk assessments, and it will not make anyone care about the AGM.
If your society charges an annual membership fee and needs tiers, renewals and a member directory rather than a series of events, that is Who’s In Clubs. Most committees need Events, which stays free until the night somebody sells a ticket. There is a broader companion piece here: how university societies run events that actually fill up.
Frequently asked questions
Is Who’s In free for student societies?
Yes. Free RSVP events are free forever on Who’s In Events — unlimited events, unlimited guests, no subscription and no per-guest charge. A society can run a freshers’ fair signup page, a first social, a weekly session every week of term and every committee meeting without paying anything. You only pay when you sell a paid ticket, and then it is a flat 2.7% platform fee.
Do our members need an account or an app to RSVP?
No. Guests tap the link, type a name and email, and they are on the list. No account, no password, no app download. That matters enormously at a freshers’ fair, where you have about eleven seconds of someone’s attention and half the queue is on a phone with 4% battery.
We collected 200 emails at the freshers’ fair. What do we actually do with them?
Send something within 48 hours, while they still remember signing up. The strongest first message is an invitation to a specific event with a specific date — not a newsletter. Build the first social event page before the fair, then the follow-up is one link. If your names are already in a spreadsheet, use the CSV import to bring them in rather than retyping them at midnight.
How do we hand over our events to next year’s committee?
Two habits fix the annual amnesia. First, register the society account to a society-owned email address — the one your union or student government issues — never the president’s personal address, so handover is a mailbox handover rather than a data migration. Second, add the incoming committee as co-hosts before the outgoing one graduates, so the list, the past events and the attendee history stay in one place. Co-hosts can manage events; they cannot delete the event, change payment settings or add other co-hosts, which is exactly the amount of power you want to hand a new social secretary in week one.
Can several committee members run the same event?
Yes — that is what co-hosts are for. The president, the social secretary and whoever is actually awake can all manage the same event, check people in on the door and see the live list. The safety rails are deliberate: a co-host cannot delete the event, cannot touch payments and cannot add further co-hosts.
Is Who’s In cheaper than Eventbrite for an £8 society social?
On platform fees, yes, and the gap is widest exactly where student events live. Eventbrite’s UK fee is 6.95% + £0.59 per paid ticket, so an £8 ticket carries £1.15 — 14.3% of face value. Who’s In takes 2.7%, which is £0.22 on the same ticket. In the US, Eventbrite’s service fee is 3.7% + $1.79 per ticket; on 80 tickets at $8 that is $166.88 versus $17.28. Fees checked 28 August 2026. Stripe’s card processing is separate and is charged by Stripe, and the money settles in your society’s own Stripe account rather than a platform wallet.
How do we stop 200 signups turning into 12 attendees?
Set a capacity, set an RSVP deadline, turn the waitlist on and let the reminders run. Free events sit in a 30–50% no-show band without reminder discipline; paid events typically land at 5–15%. Automated reminders are associated with roughly a 29% drop in non-attendance. Then reconfirm 48 hours out and release anyone who does not answer — a free spot held by a ghost is a spot a fresher on the waitlist would have taken.
How do we run a weekly society night?
Create each week’s session as its own event, with its own capacity, waitlist and reminders, and share the new link in the same group each week. Unlimited events means the twenty-fourth session of the year costs exactly what the first one did. Per-session pages also give you honest attendance data, which is the thing your union asks for at grant time and no society can ever produce.
Can we use it for sports club trials, fixtures and kit sizes?
Yes. Trials and fixtures are free events with a capacity and a waitlist. Ask for kit size, position or ability, and availability at the moment someone signs up — a custom field on the RSVP form gets answered, and a separate "everyone reply with your kit size" message does not. QR check-in works on free events, so you have a real attendance record for the club and for your union.
Is Who’s In the old iMessage “Who’s In” thing?
No. The current platform is https://whos-in.app, launched in 2026 by Craig Pollard. It is not Microsoft Garage’s discontinued iMessage extension, and it is not the similarly named Android access-control app.
Two hundred names is not the achievement
The clipboard was never the hard part. The hard part is the eight days afterwards, and the September after that, and the committee after that. A live list, a first social that already exists, reminders that send themselves, a waitlist that fills the gaps, and an account that outlives the people who set it up — free while your events are free, 2.7% on the night you sell a ticket.
Do that once and next year’s committee inherits a society, not a shoebox.