How a Local Theatre Company Turned Scattered Donor Data into a Fundraising Engine

Eastern Front Theatre needed strong systems for a constantly changing team

Eastern Front Theatre is a small theatre company with a big operational footprint. With only two full-time employees, a few part-time staff, a working volunteer board, and new teams coming together for each production, the organization depends on clear systems to keep everyone aligned.

As General Manager, Elsa Pihl oversees the operations side of the company, including financials, HR, fundraising, volunteer management, and contracts. Elsa helps make sure the administrative foundation is strong enough to support every production, outreach project, and fundraising effort.

Because theatre work is project-based, the administrative foundation matters. Eastern Front Theatre also runs community outreach projects and sector development work, each with different needs.

“Every time we do a production, we bring on a whole team of people to work on that show,” Elsa said. “They work like crazy for anywhere from two weeks to six months on a show, and then they move on.”

For a small nonprofit arts organization with limited staff and many collaborators, Eastern Front Theatre needed a system that could make donor information easy to access and help their staff and volunteers contribute without requiring deep technical training.

The challenge: no central source of truth

When Elsa joined Eastern Front Theatre as a part-time administrator, one of her first priorities was helping the organization catch up on paperwork and bring order to years of scattered information.At the time, there were no strong systems in place. Contact details and donor information lived across many spreadsheets, often created year by year.The organization was using Sumac, but no one really knew how to use it, the data inside it was not being actively managed, and the software did not connect with the rest of the team’s tools.

The result was a fragmented administrative setup:

Elsa realized quickly that the organization needed a CRM that could bringdonor, contact, communication, and fundraising data together.

“As a small organization, we need something that everybody canaccess and keep everything in order,” Elsa said.

Why Keela: a better fit with a more intuitive experience

Elsa approached the CRM search with the same level of organization she brought to the rest of the role. She researched the top options for small nonprofits, prioritized tools based in Canada, built a list of about 12 platforms, and tested each one with Eastern Front Theatre’s own information.

After comparing the options, Keela and Bloomerang were the strongest contenders. But Keela stood out for both the implementation experience and the day-to-day fit.

For Eastern Front Theatre, importing and integrating data into Keela felt smoother. The customer support experience also felt more approachable and helpful.

“With Keela, the customer service seemed a little bit more kind and forgiving. I noticed their team was happier to step in and help,” Elsa said.

Keela also felt better suited to the size and needs of the organization. While other platforms offered a large suite of features, Elsa felt many of them were built for larger nonprofits and included functionality Eastern Front Theatre would likely never use.

“Keela was exactly what we needed,” Elsa said. “I’d rather get something that we can build and grow with than get this massive tool that would be more than we ever need.”

Ease of use was another deciding factor. Eastern Front Theatre needed software that could work for people with different levels of technical comfort, including staff, volunteers, and board members who may only use the system occasionally.

“It needed to be very easy to find things,” Elsa said. “Keela was easier on that user interface.”

The solution: one place for contacts, donations, notes,and data

Once Eastern Front Theatre implemented Keela, one of the first major benefits was centralization.

The team could bring years of contact and donor information into one place, clean up duplicate records, and begin building a more reliable database. What initially looked like thousands of contacts became a clearer, more accurate supporter list once duplicate entries were identified and merged.

From there, Eastern Front Theatre could add notes, preserve relationship history, and make information accessible to the people helping manage donors and supporters. Board members could log in, contribute their knowledge about contacts, and help enrich the database.

“To be able to put all of that information in one place was super helpful,” Elsa said. “It was eye-opening.”

Keela also helped Eastern Front Theatre bring communications closer to fundraising. With Keela, the team could send newsletters and campaigns from the same system where contact and donation history lived.

Now, Eastern Front Theatre can see which supporters received a newsletter, who opened it, who clicked, and how that engagement connects to donor activity.

“With Keela everything is centralized,” Elsa said. “We could clearly see who was an active person in our organization. That was revolutionary for us.”

Keela also supports the team’s broader administrative workflows:

For a small team managing many moving parts, Keela became a central hub for the administrative work that supports fundraising, communications, finance, and community engagement.

A targeted monthly donor campaign turnedengagement data into revenue

One of the most clear examples of Keela’s impact came when Eastern Front Theatre launched its first monthly donor campaign.

Because Elsa uses tags extensively, the team had a detailed picture of supporter engagement. Some contacts had attended shows, participated in events, donated regularly, and interacted with the organization across multiple campaigns and years.

Using Keela segments, Eastern Front Theatre pulled a focused list of its most engaged supporters and sent a targeted ask inviting them to become monthly donors.

The result: the organization saw an increase monthly donors from a highly targeted outreach effort.

“We were able to do our very first monthly donor campaign and got more monthly donors just from pulling that really succinct list and reaching out to them,” Elsa said.

Elsa estimated the campaign achieved roughly a 25% success rate, meaning of the people Keela had identified, 25% made a donation. For Eastern Front Theatre, that proved the value of having clean, centralized engagement data available when the team needed it.

“This is the information we need, and we have it right here,” Elsa said.

Instead of guessing who might be most likely to respond, the team could use Keela to identify active supporters, segment them thoughtfully, and make a more relevant fundraising ask.

Better data helps Eastern Front Theatre make morestrategic decisions

Beyond individual campaigns, Keela helps Eastern Front Theatre use supporter data more strategically across fundraising and community-building efforts.

The team relies heavily on contact records, fundraising activity, tags, segments, and engagement scores to understand how people are connected to the organization. That information helps with donor outreach, campaign planning, membership interest, and even board recruitment.

When Eastern Front Theatre is considering who to approach for a campaign or who may be a strong board prospect, the team can start with its contact list and look at how engaged each person already is.

“Those fundraising numbers that you give to the contact are so helpful when we’re trying to find out how active and engaged someone is,” Elsa said. “Even when we’re going to recruit new board members, we go to our contact list first.”

That visibility gives the organization a more complete view of its community. Supporters are not just names in a spreadsheet or email subscribers in a separate tool. They are people with a history of attending, giving, clicking, participating, volunteering, and staying connected.

For a small theatre company, that context makes every outreach effort more intentional.

The result: less administrative friction and a CRM thewhole team can use

With Keela, Eastern Front Theatre has moved from scattered information and disconnected systems to a centralized CRM that supports the way a small arts nonprofit actually operates.

The organization can keep donor records, contact notes, email engagement, forms, financial data, and fundraising campaigns in one place. Staff, board members, and volunteers can access the same information, even as people move in and out of projects or roles.

For Elsa, Keela’s value is not only that it centralizes administrative work, but also that the system is intuitive enough for many different people to use and flexible enough to grow with the organization.

“You can centralize most of your administrative activities in a software that is intuitive, easy to learn,” Elsa said. “Whether it’s your board members who know nothing about the software or you have a volunteer coming in, it’s super easy for anyone, no matter their technical ability, to use and navigate.”

Elsa also points to Keela’s ongoing product development, customer feedback loop, and sector-focused education as reasons she continues to recommend it. Over the years, she has seen Keela add features based on customer input and provide webinars and resources designed to help nonprofits.

“It just felt like Keela really cared about the nonprofit sector,” Elsa said.

For Eastern Front Theatre, Keela provides the structure a small, dynamic organization needs to keep fundraising, communications, and community relationships organized. With better data and easier workflows, the team can spend less time chasing information and more time building the relationships that sustain its work.