Getting Started with Plinth

Welcome to Plinth! This guide will walk you through the first steps of setting up your organisation so you can start managing your people, events and data straight away.

Step 1 — Create your account

Head to app.plinth.org.uk and sign up with your email address and a password. You will receive a verification email — click the link to confirm your account.

If a colleague has already set up your organisation and invited you, check your inbox (and junk folder) for an invite email and follow the link instead.

Step 2 — Set up your organisation

Once you are logged in you will be guided through a short setup process. You will be asked to provide:

Organisation name — The name of your charity, community group or project.
Organisation type — For example, charity, CIC, local authority, etc.
Charity Commission details — If your organisation is registered, you can look it up here. If not, just click "No" and move on.

You can always update these details later in Settings.

Step 3 — Invite your team

You do not have to do everything yourself. To add colleagues, go to Settings and then select the Admins tab.

Enter their email address, choose whether they should be an Admin, User or Restricted User, and click Invite. They will receive an email with a link to join your organisation.

For a full explanation of the different account types, see the guide on Adding or editing admins, users & restricted users.

Step 4 — Explore your core features

Every Plinth organisation comes with a set of core features ready to use from day one. You will find these in the sidebar on the left:

People — Your central database of everyone you work with. Add people individually, upload a spreadsheet or share a registration form.
Calendar — Create events, sessions and activities. Record attendances directly from the calendar.
Tags — Organise your people and events with flexible labels. Useful for filtering and reporting.
Surveys — Build surveys to measure impact and outcomes, then send them to your members.
Registration Forms — Create customisable forms that people can fill in online to register with your organisation.
Reporting — Visualise your data with graphs, maps and tables. Export reports for your funders.

Each of these has its own detailed guide — we recommend reading through them as you start using each feature.

Step 5 — Add your people

The most important first step is getting your people onto Plinth. There are three ways to do this:

Add someone manually — Go to People and click Add New Members in the top-right corner, then choose Add someone manually.
Upload a spreadsheet — If you have an existing list in Excel or CSV, you can upload it in bulk. See the guide on Uploading a spreadsheet of People for step-by-step instructions.
Share a registration form — Let people add themselves by filling in an online form. See the guides on Registration forms and Sharing registration forms.

Step 6 — Customise your fields

Plinth comes with a set of default fields (name, email, phone, postcode, etc.) but you can add your own to capture exactly the information you need. For example, you might want to add fields for ethnicity, referral source, or any other details relevant to your work.

To manage your fields, see the guide on How to add or edit fields.

What next?

Once you have your people and events set up, here are some good next steps:

Record attendances at your sessions — see Recording attendances on Plinth.
Run a report to see your data in action — see Insights and reporting on your data.
Create a survey to measure outcomes — see Surveys and how to send them out.

If you have any questions, use the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the screen and our team will be happy to help.