For a small, lean nonprofit team, a donor platform is only as good as the number of people who can actually use it. Old Pros had one that, by their own account, needed something close to a specialized degree to operate — so the real day-to-day tracking had quietly moved into spreadsheets, and the donor platform itself was mostly dead weight on the budget.
This is how OrangeDot replaced both with one system the whole team actually uses.
What We’ll Cover
About Old Pros
Old Pros is a touring live entertainment nonprofit, running shows across multiple cities while building and stewarding a donor base to support the mission behind the work. That combination means the organization has to manage two things at once: a donor pipeline that needs real relationship tracking, and a show calendar that generates its own stream of attendee and vendor data city by city.
Before OrangeDot, both were being run through tools that were either too complex to use fully or not built for the job at all.
Two Problems Compounding Each Other
Old Pros wasn’t short on donor data. They were short on a way to get to it. The donor platform they were paying for was too complex to use day to day, and the workaround, spreadsheets, meant nobody could act on that data in real time even when they needed to.
Old Pros was running its donor management through Ontraport at roughly $4,000 a year. The platform was powerful, but by the team’s own description, using it well required something close to specialized training. Team lead Tam Garner put it plainly during planning for this case study: “Ontraport is so complex — I feel like you have to have a master’s degree in it. It’s not user friendly at all. And I’ve done trainings on it.”
Because the platform was too complicated for day-to-day use, event tracking and a meaningful share of donor tracking fell back to Google Sheets running in parallel. That meant paying for a dedicated donor platform while still doing the real work by hand — and having no real-time visibility into who was giving, how much, or how the team was engaging with them.
Paying a premium for a donor platform that’s too complex to use day to day just pushes the real work back onto spreadsheets — which defeats the purpose of paying for a dedicated system in the first place.
Leadership wanted to identify donors above a certain giving level, for example, everyone giving $1,000 or more a year, in order to personally steward them: sending birthday merchandise, inviting them to exclusive events, or having someone handwrite a thank-you note. There was no reliable way to generate that list without manually scanning a spreadsheet, and no consistent way to make sure the follow-up actually happened once a donor qualified.
The same gap showed up around events. If Old Pros wanted to invite past attendees of a specific show or city to a related future event, building that list meant digging back through records by hand, city by city.
Donor stewardship is a relationship business, but you can’t personalize outreach at scale if identifying who deserves it requires manually searching a spreadsheet every single time.
The Solution
OrangeDot built a donor management system on monday.com that replaced Ontraport entirely, folded in the show and event data that used to live separately, and put real-time reporting and automated stewardship triggers in place of manual list-building.
Donations import automatically, with duplicates caught before they’re created
A Zapier integration pulls every donation directly from Old Pros’ fundraising platform into monday.com, matching against existing contacts by email with a 24-hour hold so duplicate records never get created in the first place.
Contacts tagged automatically as they come in
Contacts and Accounts boards apply automatic tagging for recurring versus one-time donors, event attendance, and contact type — fan, VIP, media, or collaborator — without anyone entering it by hand.
Historical donor data migrated in one pass
Years of donor history from Ontraport were migrated into the new system, so the team didn’t lose any relationship history in the switch.
A live donation dashboard the team actually opens
A real-time dashboard shows total donations, sources, and averages at a glance — the feature Tam Garner uses daily and calls out as her favorite.
Automated alerts when a donor crosses a giving threshold
Rather than manually scanning for major donors, the system now notifies staff the moment someone crosses a set giving level, prompting a personal follow-up like a handwritten thank-you note.
Instant attendee lists by show or city
Staff can now pull a list of everyone who attended a specific show in seconds, making it possible to build targeted invite lists for future events in nearby or related cities — something that wasn’t practically possible before.
Keeping email marketing separate, on purpose
Rather than forcing every workflow into monday.com, the team kept Mailchimp for newsletter sends, since it remained the more cost-effective option for their nonprofit rate, while still tying engagement data back to the same contact records so donor history stays in one place.
The Impact
Old Pros went from paying for a donor platform nobody could fully use, backed by a parallel spreadsheet system, to one connected system that the team actually opens every day.
One System Instead of Two, and Real Savings to Show for It
Replacing Ontraport eliminated roughly $4,000 a year in software costs, and the team estimates the switch freed up close to five hours a week that used to go into manual tracking and lookups.
Google Sheets Is Gone for Good
The parallel spreadsheet system the team relied on to compensate for Ontraport’s complexity has been fully retired.
Real-Time Reporting, Instead of Control+F
Donor and donation data that used to require manually searching a spreadsheet is now available in a live dashboard, opened daily rather than assembled on request.
Stewardship That Actually Happens
Major donors are now flagged automatically the moment they cross a giving threshold, and event attendee lists that used to take manual digging can be pulled in seconds — turning donor stewardship from an occasional effort into a routine one.
$4,000 a year in software costs eliminated · an estimated 5 hours a week freed up from manual tracking · Ontraport and Google Sheets both replaced by one system · a donation dashboard checked daily instead of assembled on request
“I will love you guys forever. I will never have to see another spreadsheet again.”Tam Garner, Old Pros
FAQs
How do you migrate historical donor data out of a tool like Ontraport without losing history?
We treat the migration as its own project rather than an afterthought. Historical contacts and their donation history are exported and mapped into the new contact and donation structure in monday.com before the old system is retired, so the switch doesn’t create a gap in the donor record.
How does automatic donation import handle duplicate donor records?
New donations come in through an integration like Zapier and are matched against existing contacts by email before a new record is ever created. Adding a short hold window, we used 24 hours for Old Pros, gives the match logic time to run before anything is finalized, which keeps the contact list clean without anyone manually deduplicating records.
Can monday.com trigger personal stewardship actions based on giving level?
Yes. Once donation data is flowing into structured columns, a simple automation can watch for a donor’s running total crossing a set threshold and notify the right staff member to follow up, whether that’s a phone call, an event invite, or a handwritten note.
Do we need to give up our existing email tool to do this?
No. Donor management and email marketing don’t have to live in the same platform to work well together. It’s often more cost-effective to keep a dedicated email tool for sends while still connecting engagement data back to the same contact records, so donor history stays complete without forcing a switch you don’t need.
Final Thoughts
A donor platform only pays for itself if the team can actually use it without a specialist on staff. Old Pros was paying premium pricing for a tool complex enough to push real work back onto spreadsheets — the opposite of what a donor system is supposed to do for a small, lean team.
Replacing it with one connected system didn’t just cut a software line item. It gave the team a live view of their donor base and a way to act on it the same day, instead of the same quarter.
If your nonprofit is paying for a donor platform that’s too complex to use, or running donor tracking through spreadsheets by necessity, we can help you build something your whole team will actually open. Talk to an OrangeDot expert →