Custom software and web design for a club fundraising business that had outgrown its separate country sites

ClubSpot's fundraising events, where contestants raise donations from their supporters before a live event night, ran on three WordPress sites, one each for Ireland, the UK and the US. Every change had to be made three times. Underneath sat a stack of shop and donation plugins, so events were dressed up as products, clubs as vendors and donations as shop orders. Each event took hours of the team's time to set up, and most edits a club or contestant wanted came back through the same people. ClubSpot wanted one platform under a new name, where clubs look after their own pages.

One platform that keeps each club to its own region

Working from ClubSpot's own designs, we wrote the product specification and built Ralli as custom software, so Ireland, the UK and the US share one platform, and a change is made once. Each club sees only its own region's events, donors and currency, while ClubSpot's team works across every region from a single dashboard.

Donations paid directly to clubs

Donations used to reach clubs through a plugin that had fallen several updates behind. Now they go directly to each club's own account on the payment set-up ClubSpot already had, with no plugin in the middle. Refunds and disputes are recorded in the platform, and a payouts view shows where the money has gone. Offline donations can be added one at a time or uploaded in bulk from a spreadsheet.

Clubs and contestants edit their own pages

So that day-to-day content no longer routes through one team, clubs and contestants manage their own pages, and every change waits for a club manager's approval before it goes public. ClubSpot still decides which clubs can create events and keeps control of event dates. New event formats, with their own names, descriptions and branding, are added from the back office without a developer. Totals, progress bars and leaderboards update live as donations come in.

Fundraising paperwork built in from the start

Gift Aid and donors' data requests are far harder to add later, so we built them in. UK clubs collect Gift Aid declarations on the donation form and export them in the format HMRC expects, while the claim stays with the club. Donors can ask to see or erase what's held about them, and an erased donor never reappears in a later Gift Aid export. Clubs also send, sign and countersign event contracts inside the platform.

Alongside the platform, we built the Ralli marketing site, which ClubSpot's team can edit themselves.

ClubSpot now runs every region from one platform built around events, clubs and donations rather than products, vendors and orders.

The Ralli marketing site is live at rallievents.io, where clubs can see the event formats, read other clubs' stories and book a demo.

When a product has outgrown its plugins, building events and donations as what they are is cleaner than adding another plugin. Letting customers edit their own pages behind an approval step gives them independence without losing control of what goes public. Tax and data paperwork, such as Gift Aid and donors' requests to see or erase their details, belongs inside the platform rather than in a separate process.

Read more about our custom software and web design services, or see more custom software case studies and other events and entertainment projects.