Coffee Hour Sign Up Sheet (free, online)

How to set it up

Coffee hour is two jobs that people confuse: setting up and cleaning up, which takes two people for an hour, and bringing food, which takes six people five minutes on Saturday. The sheet that works has a row for each. Setup and cleanup are claimed by date; food rows (something savory, something sweet, fruit, a gluten-free option) are counts per Sunday so you never get nine plates of cookies and no fruit.

Put the whole month on one page and let people claim what they can, first come. A clipboard in the narthex fills the first two Sundays and nothing after; a link in the bulletin fills the month, because people sign up from the car. Include a row for the coffee itself, because the week nobody makes it is the week everyone remembers.

Questions people ask

What if nobody signs up for a Sunday?

The page shows which Sundays are still short, and you can email everyone on the page with one click ("next Sunday still needs the savory plate"). A reminder goes to each person the day before their Sunday.

Can a family claim a whole Sunday?

Yes. One person can take several rows for the same date in one sign-up, and they get one confirmation listing all of it.

How do we handle allergies?

Put a note on the gluten-free and nut-free rows asking for the ingredient list on a card, and add an optional question on the form for what they're bringing.

Why not a paper sheet or a Google Form?

A paper sheet lives in one place and fills up with the first people who walk past it. A Google Form takes forty signups for a row that needed two, and you find out in the spreadsheet. An online sign-up sheet closes each row when it's covered, sends a reminder the day before, and gives every person a link to cancel so the spot reopens. See the side-by-side with Google Forms.