Based in Long Beach, California, Musical Theatre West brings Broadway-quality productions to Southern California audiences, enriching the community through performance, education and outreach. Founded in 1952, the organization now produces four mainstage shows annually and runs 18 educational programs, from dance and acting classes to youth camps and student matinees.

In 2025, Taylor Presnall (Development Coordinator) and Yadira Del Rincon (Donor Relations & Special Events Coordinator) attended Spektrix Hubs — free, in-person events open to all Spektrix users to learn and share best practices. They told fellow users how they transformed their approach to donor engagement, event management and team collaboration by adopting fundraising tools in Spektrix. Their story demonstrates how both patrons and team members benefit when development, marketing and ticketing departments work in sync.

With clear data, cross-department collaboration and automated communication, Musical Theatre West:

• Improved data accuracy and donor tracking
• Streamlined the patron experience for donors and ticket buyers
• Boosted website engagement by 55%
• Grew social audience by 24%

Box Office and Marketing Collaboration to Improve Patron Journeys 

Musical Theatre West’s success was driven by collaboration across box office, marketing and fundraising teams to create a more seamless experience for patrons and donors alike.

The ticketing team helped introduce digital tickets for Apple and Google wallets, making it easier for patrons to access tickets. A new API-driven website reduced clicks, simplified purchases, and showcased accessibility options like ASL performances.

To support the theater’s work in the community, simple promo codes and ticket discounts helped to improve and track engagement. That granular data, at every step in the patron journey, built the foundations for more personalized communications and closer, lasting relationships.

“Now our donors can give easily, purchase their subscriptions online, buy tickets, and identify accessible shows without any confusion. It allows our patrons to more easily engage with us and attend performances, while also enabling us to track their participation through a variety of built-in reports and customizable tracking options, ”
says Del Rincon.

Improving ROI Through Personalized Communications 

Patron communications, from promotional messaging through to pre- and post-event emails, are often seen as the domain of the marketing department. But just like their web journeys, the team at Musical Theatre West recognized every touchpoint as part of the cross-departmental audience development strategy for a successful nonprofit.

Drag and drop segmentation tools made it simple to identify first-time visitors, track engagement by ZIP code, and build a better overall understanding of the theater’s patrons. Once they understood what people are interested in and how often they’re attending, marketing, development, and education teams designed relevant messaging for each group.

Del Rincon explains, “60% were looking at our productions, 40% at our education programs, and 10% at other events and fundraisers. We could send the right message at the right time and create the pathway to what they were looking for.”

The team also embraced targeted pre- and post-show emails, delivered through Spektrix and its marketing engine in Dotdigital. With a big, popular summer show running, it wasn’t a great time for their parking lot to be under construction. They managed patrons’ expectations with clear, automated messaging before every visit, and followed up with post-show surveys to understand visitors’ experience.

Keeping Donor Data Accurate and Actionable 

Musical Theatre West switched their ticketing and marketing to Spektrix in 2021, but didn’t begin using fundraising tools until 2023. With that shift they discovered how much clarity a fully connected CRM could provide.

It was Presnall’s goal to ensure the team had the most accurate information for all of their donors. He reached out to Spektrix asking for advice on how best to record patron information, and was introduced to the activities dashboard. Here, every member of the development team could keep track of donations, ticket history and other interactions, and remember every detail of their relationship with each donor.

The data at their fingertips included:

• Transaction data, including ticket sales, gifts, and participation in classes or camps
• Accounting details, with the ability to store records of every check and pay stub
• Grant tracking, using development tools designed to manage relationships with individual donors, trusts, and foundations
• Personal details, including photos of each donor against their profiles for easy recognition
• Financial details, making it possible to split a check across five campaign areas and still link it easily to a single giving history

In future, there’s potential to achieve even more, with the ability to add records of every letter, phone call and conversation to the donor record, and to assign and prioritize tasks across the team.

By using the dashboard to log every donor contact and decision, the team gained complete visibility of giving history and touchpoints, strengthening accountability and donor trust. That accurate, granular data also underpins clearer reporting and stronger insights into donor behavior.

“The Activities Dashboard has been a gamechanger for tracking donations. We can record split gifts, assign staff members, and categorize every interaction - nothing slips through the cracks,” says Presnall.

Managing Complex Fundraising Events Through One Platform 

In the past year, Musical Theatre West has begun managing one of its most complex initiatives, the Travel Club, through Spektrix.

The Club takes 65 patrons to New York City each May. With support from Sara, a fundraising specialist on the Spektrix support team, Del Rincon was able to book, manage and coordinate the whole trip from one system.

By centralizing ticketing and donor management, the team can run events their way while keeping all donor and transaction data within Spektrix — ensuring consistency across records and eliminating manual imports.

“Sara helped us figure out how we could use events and ticketing, merchandise, reservation features, promo codes, and all the fun things to allow our patrons to enjoy the discounts they were used to, the add-ons they needed, and customize the travel experience,” explains Del Rincon. “We were also able to automate travel information and email updates to them as soon as they registered.”

Musical Theatre West’s story shows how a connected digital strategy — uniting ticketing, marketing, development and education — can drive deeper relationships across an entire organization.

Previously, disconnected systems limited collaboration, accuracy, and donor engagement. By bringing systems together, they now have access to clear data, driving automated, personalized communications and collaboration across departments.

“Clean data means clear insight, and clear insight drives stronger connections and real growth across the whole organization,” says Del Rincon. “We can track every donation, task, and relationship detail in one place. It’s made stewardship so much easier.”

Learn more about the impact of connected CRM and ticketing tools in Spektrix.

This article was sponsored by Spektrix.