Six weeks out
The event page goes live
Tickets are sold by type on a branded page, with promo codes for board and young-patron pricing.
Arts Nonprofit Donation Software
Fundraising and donor management software for arts, theatre and museum organizations
One development office — usually fewer than five people — runs the annual fund, the gala, the grant calendar, sponsor agreements and the docent roster.
Cloud Donor Manager is one platform that replaces five systems, with events, auctions and volunteers included rather than sold separately. One thing it is not: a box office. It sits alongside whatever sells your performance tickets.
Your gala, your auction and your paddle raise, on one system
Walk the night the way you actually run it.
RUN OF SHOW
Every gift, bidder and transaction returns to one donor record.
6:00 pm
Doors
Guests are checked in from a phone or tablet, rosters live, with no printed list or laptop table.
7:30 pm
The auction
Online auction items and real-time bidding run in the same platform, with no separate auction vendor.
8:45 pm
The appeal
Terminals on the tables and Tap to Phone turn volunteers’ phones into contactless giving devices for the paddle raise.
All night
Bar, merchandise and add-ons
Sold through point of sale on the same account and deposit, with receipts texted at the moment of the gift.
Wi-Fi drops
Giving keeps moving
Offline batch capture holds transactions locally and settles them when the historic theatre, museum hall or tent reconnects.
Monday
Nothing to merge
Online, in-person, kiosk and POS activity has landed in one ledger, one reconciliation and one set of reports.
The week you currently spend hand-merging bidders back into the donor database does not exist here.
Members, patrons and sustainers who renew without a chase
Arts organizations think in named levels — Friends, Patron Circle, Director’s Circle — and in monthly sustainers. Here that means giving tier sets for recognition and recurring gifts that renew automatically.
Journeys handle lapsed-supporter win-backs, upgrade asks, post-event follow-up and welcome series, with automations triggered by real events such as a first gift or failed recurring payment. LYBUNT and SYBUNT surface the patron who gave last season and has not given this one, while automatic retry addresses declined recurring gifts.
In a self-service portal, patrons update their card, switch to ACH, change amounts, pause or cancel, and review their complete giving history and statements — reducing “can you resend my receipt?” requests.
One patron record instead of four lists
The same patron often exists as a ticket buyer, donor, auction bidder and email subscriber. Consolidation keeps recognition listings accurate.
Duplicate-record cleanup
Find and merge duplicate records with a full merge audit trail.
Households
Group couples for accurate giving totals and accurate program listings.
The whole searchable profile
Gifts, dates, designations, tributes, interactions, notes and attachments, with global search and audience segments.
The major-gift pipeline
Tasks, interaction logging, donor scoring and wealth screening support campaign cultivation.
Tribute gifts, fund designations and giving history stay on the same record. Guided CSV import includes automatic field mapping, managed batches, import history and undo. Cloud Donor Manager does not replace or automatically sync with your ticketing system; REST API and webhooks are the documented custom path. See how setup and migration work →
Docents, ushers and front-of-house on a real schedule
Volunteer management ships with the platform instead of living in a spreadsheet, group text or separate add-on.
The volunteer who ushers on Friday and gives to the annual fund is one record — and manages both in the same portal.
Grants tracked to the deadline
Track grants already in flight from application through award, reporting and renewal. Grant reports and automated report reminders help prevent an interim report from jeopardizing a renewal the budget already assumes.
Sponsorships out of the email thread
Sponsor records, agreements with attachments, a dedicated board report and e-signature keep season, exhibition and production sponsorships together. Beneficiary and program-recipient outcomes can connect to gifts for arts-education funder reporting.
One more channel this sector under-uses: Text-to-Give. A keyword and short code turn the curtain speech, intermission appeal, gallery-floor ask or underwriting spot into a gift and donor record. The Text-to-Give page explains carrier registration and consent tracking.
Board numbers, season reporting and receipts
Built once. Ready before the meeting.
An executive dashboard shows revenue, retention, pipeline and campaign performance. Built-in reports cover LYBUNT, SYBUNT, retention, recurring donors, major gifts, donation summaries, campaigns and sponsorships; custom and scheduled reports handle the rest, including ROI by campaign.
Deposits that speak the bookkeeper’s language.
A built-in general ledger view, batches matching deposits, and QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Xero sync support reconciliation. Every completed donation triggers a branded receipt; recurring supporters are thanked automatically, and year-end summaries generate in bulk.
What it replaces, and how it’s priced
There are no platform fees. Pricing does not scale by contact record, so growing the mailing list after a well-attended season costs nothing extra. A development office should never have to ration names to avoid crossing a software tier.
Payment processing is quoted by Host Merchant Services, the payment processor that builds Cloud Donor Manager, and underwritten to actual volume and average gift size. One vendor supplies the donor platform and merchant account, while donors can choose to cover the processing fee at checkout.
Questions from arts and cultural organizations
Does this replace our box office or ticketing system?
No — and it is not trying to. It handles event pages and ticket types for galas, benefits and fundraising events, and runs alongside performance ticketing; REST API and webhooks support custom connections.
Can we run our gala auction without a separate vendor?
Yes. Online auction items and real-time bidding are in the platform, with no separate auction vendor or donor list to merge afterward.
What happens if venue Wi-Fi drops during the auction?
Giving keeps working. Offline batch capture holds transactions locally and settles them when you reconnect.
Can we bring our donor history from our current database?
Yes. Guided CSV import includes automatic field mapping, managed migration batches, import history and an undo if something looks wrong.
Can our docents and ushers be scheduled in the same system?
Yes. Public signup, shift templates, swaps with staff approval, SMS reminders and volunteer self-service run in the same portal they give from.
More questions are answered on our FAQ page.