Plenty of nonprofits find success with events. In 2024, 75% of the organizations that hosted in-person events met or exceeded their goals, with 76% of hybrid events reaching their targets.

However, planning a successful event requires your nonprofit to manage logistics, ensure compliance, track participation, and more—all these moving parts can quickly become chaotic. Tools like event CRMs and specialized event planning tools will reduce friction, but digitizing the entire event planning process will have the biggest positive impact.

In particular, digital waivers are a powerful but often overlooked solution that helps streamline event planning and provide better experiences for your staff, volunteers, and event attendees. This article explores the key benefits of creating and using waivers as well as practical, proven ways digital waivers can reduce headaches and streamline event logistics.

Why Add Digital Waivers to Your Event Toolkit?

The benefits of using digital event waivers are twofold: they protect your nonprofit from legal liability and boost efficiency.

When attendees sign waivers, they are acknowledging the risks associated with the event and releasing your organization from liability if something happens. Typically, every guest needs to sign a waiver if your event warrants one. By handling the whole process digitally, you can collect necessary participant information quickly and securely without needing to wrangle clipboards or decipher illegible handwriting.

But how do you know if your event needs a waiver? Here are some common scenarios where nonprofits benefit from using digital waivers:

Physical activities like fun runs or fitness challenges
Volunteer shifts involving tools, heavy lifting, or other minor risks (e.g., a volunteer working with animals at an adoption event fundraiser for an animal shelter)
Youth programs requiring parental consent
Events involving photography, video, or other media recordings that require a signed photo release
Vendor or partner participation agreements

Keep in mind that not all digital waiver platforms are created equal, and some solutions won’t have everything you need to make your event a success. Smartwaiver’s guide to activity waivers emphasizes the importance of highly customizable form-building tools that allow you to add signature and initial boxes, flagged questions, and safety or training videos. The waivers should also work on any device, securely store data, and integrate with your other event management tools.

4 Ways Digital Waivers Streamline Event Planning

1. Go Paperless

Traditionally, event planning involved piles of physical documents—waiver forms, checklists, contact sheets, and schedules. While most organizations have moved away from this method and now rely on event planning technology, using digital waivers is a key step in transitioning your entire planning process into a fully paperless, cloud-based system.

By digitizing waivers, your nonprofit can:

Eliminate printing costs and reach your sustainability goals.
Save staff time and reallocate the hours that would be spent printing and filing forms toward strategic or mission-critical activities.
Manage everything from one platform, making collaboration between departments faster and more transparent.

Digital waivers fit seamlessly into your broader event and communications strategies. For example, you can make registration easy for participants by linking to the digital waiver in social media posts promoting the event.

2. Simplify Record-Keeping and Reporting

Waivers are a treasure trove of valuable first-party data, or information collected directly from your supporters. This includes personal information like name and birthday, contact information, event participation and history, and even communication preferences. By choosing to use digital waivers, you can export clean data sets directly from the platform to your donor database rather than manually input information from stacks of paper.

Here’s how this data can come in handy throughout the event planning process:

Before the event:

Analyze past data to proactively address common issues, estimate attendance rate, etc.
Automatically send reminders to registrants who have not completed the waiver
Follow up on waivers that contain errors or incomplete information.

During the event:

Quickly pull participant data as needed (e.g., allergies or other medical information).
Use waiver responses to anticipate capacity and efficiently allocate staff.

After the event:

Easily export attendance data and signed waivers.
Generate follow-up lists for thank-yous, surveys, or future event invitations.
Analyze participation trends to inform planning for your next event.

The result is a faster, more organized workflow that gives you time back to focus on your mission. Plus, you can avoid siloed or fragmented data by storing all event metrics, from waivers to marketing data to donated inventory information, digitally.

3. Accommodate Last-Minute Changes

Even the best-laid event plans can shift unexpectedly. Weather changes, volunteer no-shows, or updated health protocols can require fast adjustments. Digital waivers give you flexibility in the face of the unexpected.

For example, say it’s a day before the event. Your marketing team asks if you can add a quick survey to the end of the waiver asking how participants heard about the event, helping them accurately track the success of individual communication channels. With digital waivers, this is simple—all you need to do is add the question to the digital form, and it will automatically be updated.

Being able to revise waivers in real-time without having to reprint forms means no more last-minute scrambles and event planning headaches. Participants can re-sign updated versions instantly from their devices, keeping everyone informed and protected.

4. Streamline Registration and Check-In

Modern event planning tools allow nonprofits to automate repetitive, manual tasks that would otherwise cost them hours of their valuable time. As Double the Donation explains, automation benefits both organizations and donors by freeing up time for nonprofit staff to connect with supporters, answer questions, solve problems, and work on mission-focused tasks.

Digital waivers can be smoothly integrated into your existing automated workflows, functioning as a self-service registration tool for event attendees. Participants can register, complete the waiver, and submit the forms all without your staff lifting a finger. Then, signed waivers are automatically stored in a secure database.

Best of all, attendees can complete these steps online ahead of the event, cutting down on check-in desk congestion (and guest frustration). Share links to the waiver in digital communications and embed the form on your website. However, make sure you have a plan or alternative for those who don’t complete the waiver in advance. For example, set up waiver kiosk stations by using a waiver solution with a mobile app for tablets. This way, you’ll still be able to collect day-of waivers digitally and save time and paper.

Digital waivers are a strategic tool your nonprofit can leverage to streamline operations, protect your organization, and create smoother experiences for participants. By choosing the right platform and integrating it into your event planning process, you can reduce stress, inspire more attendees to contribute to your cause, and focus on supporting and spreading awareness of your mission.