Building a marketing and fundraising infrastructure for a community music series.
The Challenge
Crabtree Sessions had the ingredients of a thriving community institution: strong programming, a loyal audience, and an established artistic reputation. What it needed was infrastructure to pave the way for a successful sixth season. As the organization established itself as a new non-profit, the team relied on manual workflows that weren’t built to scale.
The goal: build systems and a modern marketing stack that could sustain and grow the series long-term, without adding complexity.
Starting strengths
- Large email list of past attendees
- Strong and engaged Instagram presence
- $35K in organic donations (2025)
- Strong artistic identity and loyal audience
Core gaps
- Disconnected email, ticketing, and donation platforms
- No CRM or donor management system
- No repeatable marketing or campaign framework
What I Did
Business & Revenue Strategy
- Developed a 2026 business plan with a $90K revenue target
- Modeled a revenue mix across ticket sales, donations, grants, and season passes
Email Marketing System
- Built a Mailchimp system integrated with their CRM (Givebutter) via Zapier
- Developed campaign templates for newsletters, event promotions, and fundraising appeals
- Developed an engagement calendar to correspond with seasonal promotions
CRM & Donor Management
- Implemented the organization’s first centralized donor database for tracking engagement
- Designed a stewardship workflow including post-event follow-up and acknowledgements
- Built team training and documentation for long-term sustainability
Website & Conversion Optimization
- Full website refresh to align on-site experience with campaign messaging
- Clarified pathways for ticket purchases, donations, and event discovery
- Reduced friction across key conversion journeys
Pitch Deck Development
- Created an artist pitch deck communicating audience profile, venue experience, and compensation structure
- Built a sponsorship pitch deck structuring the offering for local and regional partners
Operational Systems & Workflow Design
- Designed repeatable workflows for event operations, attendance tracking, and revenue reporting
- Built templates and documentation to reduce manual effort and support volunteer onboarding
Results
Raised on Giving Tuesday to prepare for season 6
Raised in pre-launch donations before the season lineup was announced
Email open rates across campaigns
Click-through rates (surpassing nonprofit benchmarks)
Centralized donor database and CRM established
2026 revenue target, with grants and benefit show as new income streams
Key Takeaways
Build infrastructure for scalable growth. For nimble teams with volunteers, automating as much of the marketing systems is key. This includes integrating tools like Zapier when needed, automating email flows, and syncing CRMs to make sure systems are clear and the team can focus on the work itself.
Nurture the relationship you’ve already made with the audience. For an intimate, community-rooted nonprofit, all digital touchpoints need to feel like the show: warm, intentional, and joyful.
Budding nonprofits have different needs than other new businesses. Outlining a manageable donor relationship routine and building a vision of how attendees will turn into community members requires year-long event and entertainment planning, not just one-off email campaigns.
Get in touch.
Need help building marketing systems for your organization?