For faith and community committees
Invitations and RSVPs on WhatsApp for mosque, gurdwara and temple committees
Avently sends each person on your committee’s list their own WhatsApp invitation, collects their answer and your follow-up questions in the same chat, and writes every reply to a guest list the committee can see. It suits volunteer iftars, committee dinners, Diwali dinners, Eid Brunch and other events with named guests, up to 250 per event.
The problems
Announced in one place, counted in another
Many mosques and centres run a WhatsApp announcement community (one Halifax mosque’s site says “Join Our WhatsApp announcement community” (Ummah Masjid)). The event goes out there, but the sign-up lives on a form or a ticketing page. Members reply in the chat anyway, and someone on the committee copies those replies across by hand.
The kitchen needs a number before the pots come out
An iftar, a langar-style meal or a Diwali dinner is cooked for a headcount, and the hall has a limit. Food costs have climbed, and Toronto mosques have reported “a significant shortage of sponsors” for iftars (IQRA). A committee that guesses the number either runs short or pays for food nobody asked for.
The people chasing replies are volunteers
Committee members do this after work. More than half of Canadian charities surveyed, 53%, say they have “limited staff time available to recruit, screen, or manage volunteers” (CharityVillage). Messaging a hundred people one by one, then reading every reply, lands on whoever has the most patience that week.
What Avently does
- The committee builds the event in a web form: name, date, venue, organiser. Avently can create the guest list in the committee’s own Google Drive, or you connect one.
- Avently sends each guest a WhatsApp message addressed to them by name, with the event name and date, Yes and No buttons, and a STOP option.
- Guests who say yes get a link to the event page: date and time, the venue with a maps link, dress code and add-to-calendar buttons. You can add your own invitation card as a picture at the top.
- You write the follow-up questions: how many are coming, dietary needs, which shift a volunteer can take. Two or three options show as buttons, four to ten as a list. Only guests who say yes are asked.
- Guests can type a reply (“yes”, “sure”) instead of tapping, and reply CHANGE to change their answer.
- Avently writes each guest’s answers to the guest list when they finish replying, and shows them on a live dashboard. The committee reminds only the guests who have not answered, up to twice each.
Hi Amara 👋 You’ve been invited by Sarah to Annual Members’ Dinner on 7 November. Can you make it? Tap a button below to RSVP.
Yes, I’ll be there
Can’t make it
STOP - Opt out
What it costs
The first 25 invitations each month are free. After that, the committee pays per invitation sent. See pricing.
What it doesn’t do yet
- 250 guests per event. A nightly open iftar that feeds hundreds of walk-ins is not the fit. Committee dinners, volunteer iftars and invite-only events are.
- No message to every confirmed guest at once. If the hall or the time changes, the committee has to tell guests another way.
- No text-message fallback. Members who do not use WhatsApp do not get the invitation.
- An announcement channel is not a contact list. Avently needs each guest’s phone number on the list, and the committee should only invite people who expect to hear from it.
- No invitations to US numbers. Meta blocks this kind of message to US phones. Canadian and most other numbers work.
- No shift scheduling, waitlists or payments. A question can record which shift a volunteer picks, but Avently does not cap shifts or send shift reminders.
Common questions
Can we send invitations to everyone in our WhatsApp announcement community?
Not directly. An announcement community does not give you a list of members’ numbers. Avently sends to the people on your guest list, one message each, so you need each person’s number and their expectation of hearing from the committee.
Does it work for members who don’t use WhatsApp?
No. Avently sends invitations over WhatsApp only, so members without it need a phone call, an email or a notice at the centre.
How many guests can one event have?
Up to 250. For a larger gathering, split the guests into separate events, for example one per group of volunteers. Keep each person on one list: Avently skips anyone still answering another event’s invitation.
Can volunteers choose a shift?
Yes, as a question. Add a list of shifts (kitchen, serving, clean-up) and each volunteer who says yes picks one. Avently records the choice in the guest list; it does not limit how many people take each shift.
Who can see the guest list?
Whoever the committee shares it with, and Avently, which writes the replies to it. The guest list is a Google Sheet in the Google Drive of the Google account connected to Avently, so connect the committee’s shared account rather than one volunteer’s personal account.
Get started
Start with your next committee dinner or volunteer iftar. The first 25 invitations each month are free.