Organize an event with Friends of Ryan

1. What organizing an event means here

The short version: you propose it, we review it, you run it, and Friends of Ryan puts it live.

1. You send us the idea using the organizer form. Nothing is public at this stage.
2. A Friends of Ryan admin reads it and either approves you or gets in touch. You'll hear either way.
3. Once approved, you get an account with organizer access to your event — and only your event — so you can fill in the date, venue, description and ticket types.
4. When it's ready, an admin publishes it and it appears on the public events page.

You do not need to know the date, the venue, or the details yet. A working title and a description of the idea is enough to start the conversation — you fill in the rest after you're approved.

2. What the form asks you for

The organizer form lives at /apply-organizer/. You don't need an account to fill it in.

Required — you can't submit without these:

• Your name and Email — how we reach you, and the address your account will be created against.
• Business / organization name — the group putting the event on. If it's just you, put your own name; it doesn't have to be a registered company.
• Phone.
• Tell us about the event — the important one. What is it, roughly when, who is it for, and what do you need from us? This is what the admin actually reads when deciding.
• The consent checkbox: “I agree to be contacted about this organizer application.”

Naming the event. There's a field called “What should we call the event?” If you're proposing something new, type a working title here — it doesn't have to be final. If you leave it blank and haven't picked an existing event, the form will stop you with: “Tell us what you would like to call the event, or pick an existing one.”

Optional, but worth filling in: your position or role, a website, a short description of your organization, a logo, and your Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / X / LinkedIn / TikTok handles. These populate your organizer profile and, if your event has sponsors, the way your organization is presented.

If you tick “Are You An Archbishop Ryan High School Alumni?”, a Graduation Year dropdown appears and is required. If you don't tick it, that field stays hidden and is not asked for.

3. What happens after you submit

You'll see a confirmation on screen straight away: “Thanks! Your application is in. We'll email you when an organizer reviews it.”

Behind the scenes, three things happen:

1. Your application goes into the Friends of Ryan review queue, and an admin is emailed that it arrived.
2. You get a confirmation email — subject “We received your event proposal”.
3. If you named a new event, it's created as a private, pending record so the admin can see what you're proposing. It is not visible to the public and won't be until it's finished and published.

If this is your first time on our site, an account is created for you at the same time and you'll get a second email — “Welcome to Friends of Ryan — set your password”. That one arrives when you apply, not when you're approved, so don't wait for a decision before setting your password. If you already had an account, you won't get it and nothing has gone wrong.

Applying does not give you access yet. Until an admin approves you, you can sign in as a normal member but you won't see any event management tools.

4. What you can do once you're approved

You'll get an email telling you your proposal is approved. From then on, signed in with the account you applied with:

You can:

• Edit your event — title, description, dates and times, venue, registration limit, images, and who's performing.
• Set up your ticket types and any merch, with prices, stock and sale windows.
• Manage your people — review volunteer, speaker and performer sign-ups for your event.
• Run the door on the day: sell tickets, scan people in, and see your live check-in count.
• Issue refunds for your event, including after the event has finished.
• See how it went — your attendance numbers and the feedback your guests leave.

You can't — and these are deliberate:

• Publish your own event. Putting an event on the public site is an admin decision. You get it ready; they press the button. So don't be alarmed when your event sits at Pending — that's the normal state, not a problem, and you don't have to do anything to trigger the review.
• Delete an event, including your own. Ask an admin.
• See anyone else's event. Your access is scoped to the event you're organizing. Other events' attendees, sponsors, money and rosters are invisible to you.
• Send mass emails or edit sponsors, pricing and financials. Friends of Ryan staff handle those — ask and they'll send it for you.

Once you're approved, the full step-by-step guide to running your event — the management panel, tickets, the door tools, check-in — is at /staff-help/. It needs you to be signed in, and your organizer account unlocks it automatically.

5. Ready to apply

Have a rough idea of the event and about ten minutes. You can't save a half-finished form, so fill it in one sitting.

Apply to organize an event

Not quite what you're after? You can also volunteer at an event, speak, perform, or bring a stall. Questions first? Contact us.