GetHow to collect RSVPs for a community event without the chaos
The reliable way to collect RSVPs from members is one email invitation with a click-to-respond link, landing in a single tally the organiser can see. Everything else, and most groups have tried everything else, produces the same failure: responses scattered across reply emails, two chat threads and a conversation in the car park, with no one sure of numbers until the day.
Why the usual methods fall apart
Reply-by-email means someone reads every reply and maintains the spreadsheet by hand, and replies keep arriving after the count. Chat-group polls capture only the members on that platform, and the poll scrolls out of sight within a day, taking the late deciders with it. Paper lists at the previous event capture only the people who came to the previous event. Each method works at ten people and fails at forty, and the failure lands on one volunteer.
What good looks like
Members should be able to respond in one click from the invitation itself, with no account to create and no app to install. The organiser should see a live count, and the list of names where catering or capacity depends on it. Members change their minds, so changing a response should be as easy as the original click, with the latest answer winning. And the invitation should reach the whole membership, which in practice means email.
Getting better response rates
A few habits raise response rates more than any tool. Ask for the RSVP in the subject line, not just the body ("Summer social, 20 July: are you coming?"). Give the response options in the invitation rather than asking people to compose a reply; attending, not attending and maybe covers nearly everyone, and a maybe you can chase beats a silence you cannot read. Send one reminder to non-responders a week before, and only to non-responders, because reminding the people who already answered teaches everyone to ignore your reminders. State a respond-by date when numbers commit you to costs.
Capacity, waitlists and the catering question
If the venue holds sixty, decide before invitations go out what happens at sixty-one: first come first served with a waitlist is the arrangement members accept most readily, provided it is stated up front. For catering, treat maybes as attending for ordering purposes if the marginal cost is small, and as not attending if it is large; either way, decide the rule in advance so the treasurer is not improvising. And close responses a sensible interval before the commitment date, because the caterer's deadline, not the event date, is your real deadline.
After the event
Keep the response list. Who came to the last three socials is the most honest picture a committee has of engagement, far better than the membership roll, and it makes the case at the AGM when someone asks whether the events budget is worth it.