How to run club sign-ups at an activities fair

It's 1 p.m. on the quad and the activities fair has just opened. Sixty club tables, each with a clipboard, a bowl of candy, and two officers talking over each other. A first-year stops at the climbing club for thirty seconds, can't get to the pen, and moves on. By 4 p.m. the chess club has forty names, half of them illegible. If you're working out how to run club sign-ups at an activities fair, the fix is to let every student sign up on their own phone, at every table at once, with the right club's list filling as they go.

With Textiful, each club table gets its own free QR code. A student scans, replies with their student email and their year, and gets the club's first meeting time by text. Each sign-up is tagged with the club's name, and the officers can get an email for every one.

The problem with a clipboard per club

A clipboard works for one student at a time, and the fair is a crowd. The line forms behind the one pen, and students who are browsing don't wait. The ones who do write in a hurry, so the emails come back with a missing letter or a guessed domain.

Then the sheets scatter. Each club carries its clipboard home and types up its own spreadsheet, or doesn't. The student life office has no single view of which clubs drew a crowd, and when officers graduate in May, the sign-ups from three fairs leave with them.

Why the usual fixes fall short

• A sign-up form link on the table sign is hard to type on a crowded quad, and a long form asks a lot for a club the student heard about thirty seconds ago.
• One shared form for every club puts everyone in one list, and someone has to sort it by club afterward.
• A tablet at the table brings back the line, one student at a time.
• "Follow us on Instagram" gets a follow from some students and no way to reach them about the first meeting.

How to set it up in Textiful

1. Build one flow from "Quick email signup." It asks for the student's email first. Add a "Collect custom data" step such as "What year are you?" Custom data accepts any reply, so students can answer "sophomore" or "2029."
2. Add actions. "Tag the contact" with the club's name, "Send a text" with the first meeting time and room, and "Email me a notification" to the club's officers. Add the contact to Mailchimp, Kit, ActiveCampaign, or HubSpot if your office runs club newsletters from there.
3. Copy the flow for each club. A copy keeps the steps and settings, so you only change the club name, the meeting details, and the officers' email. Give each copy its own free QR code.
4. Download and print. Each code downloads as a PNG or SVG from the flow's trigger card. Put it on that club's table sign, large, with a line about what students get: "Scan for the first meeting time."

What to put on the table sign

Lead with what the student gets: "Scan to join Robotics Club. We'll text you the first meeting." Put the QR code at eye level, not flat on the table where it's covered by candy and flyers. If the club gives a talk or a demo from the fair's stage, a keyword they can say out loud helps, such as "Text ROBOTS to 33777." A keyword is unique on its short code, so pick early and try 55444 if one is taken. QR code sign design has more on placement.

How many questions to ask

Two is enough: email and year. Across Textiful flows over 90 days in 2026, two-question flows were completed 83.1% of the time and three-question flows 85.0%. Save the rest, such as majors, availability, and dues, for the first meeting or the club's own form.

Before and after

	A clipboard per club	A QR code per club with Textiful
Signing up	One student at a time, one pen	Every student at once, on their phone
Email quality	Handwriting on a clipboard	Typed by the student, with a retry for bad emails
Next step	"We'll email you"	The first meeting time by text, right away
Club lists	Sixty spreadsheets, typed up later	A tag per club, filtered and exported as a CSV
When officers graduate	The sheets leave with them	The account and contacts stay with the school

Who this is for, and who should skip it

It fits US student life and activities offices, student government, and large student organizations that run a fair with many clubs under one account. A single club with one table and twenty sign-ups may be fine with a clipboard. If many students at your school use phone numbers from outside the US, keep a web form link on each table too. High schools should follow their own policies on collecting students' contact details.

You pay per conversation, one for each student who starts a sign-up, with plans from $19/month. A busy fair that goes over your plan adds conversations automatically at $15 per 100. See pricing. For orientation and open houses, see schools and campus events, and for the door at a campus event, event check-in by text.

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