How Park Theatre Raised More Than $6,500 in Two Days with Ludus Fundraiser
One fundraising campaign, round-ups on every ticket, and a two-day fundraiser that brought in more than $6,500.
The Challenge
The historic Park Theatre has stood on River Avenue in Holland, Michigan for more than 100 years. It has been a feed store, a silent movie house, a movie theater, and a teen nightclub. Today it is a nonprofit live music and community venue with about 500 seats, a Tuesday open mic that draws more than 100 people a week, and a stage that has hosted Billy Strings, Judy Collins, and Kevin Nealon. In 2026, the Park Theatre Foundation celebrates 25 years as a nonprofit.
Robyn Schoop joined the board in 2024 and became its president about six months later. She spent her first year listening, and one problem kept showing up. People loved the Park as a place to see a show. Very few knew it was a nonprofit. "It seemed like Holland's best kept secret," she said.
That gap costs money. Improvements to the building, including the bathrooms, fire suppression, and the marquee, get funded one project at a time, often through a dedicated campaign. Andrew Kinsler, owner of Textures Event Lighting, has worked with the Park for nearly two decades and calls it "somewhat of a shoestring budget." Robyn put the stakes plainly: "If you look at other small venues, it's a really, really scary landscape for small entertainment venues." For Park Fest 2026, the board set a $25,000 goal for its 25th year, up from $20,000 the year before.
The Ludus Solution
The Park already sold its tickets through Ludus, so the team built Park Fest as a fundraising campaign in Ludus Fundraiser, inside the same system. The campaign gave every gift a home. Ticket buyers could round up at checkout, guests could give in the room, and every dollar landed in one campaign total. Nobody had to reconcile a second donation platform after the party ended.
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The campaign also worked in the room. Park Fest has a tradition called the Money Minute: 60 seconds of hyping the theatre's projects while volunteers work the crowd with a cash can. This year the team printed a QR code tied to the Ludus campaign and carried it right alongside the can. The setup took about five minutes.
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Features That Made the Difference
A Fundraising Campaign Built Inside Ludus
Park Fest ran as its own campaign in Ludus Fundraiser. Because the campaign lived in the same system as the Park Fest tickets, the team could attach giving to the ticket purchase, generate a QR code for the event, and track every gift against one goal. Each new building project can get its own campaign the same way.
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Round-Up Donations on Every Ticket
When patrons bought Park Fest tickets, Ludus invited them to round up their purchase as a donation. It asks almost nothing of the buyer and takes no separate gift form. It also keeps working after the fundraiser ends, because round-ups run on regular ticket sales too. That is how a few dollars at a time turns into thousands of dollars a year for the Park.
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QR Code Giving in the Room
A printed QR code tied to the campaign let guests without cash give from their phones in the middle of the moment. Every QR gift went into the same campaign total as the round-ups.
Targeted Email Campaigns
Robyn spent her career in corporate communications, so she judged the email tools closely. Ludus lets the team group patrons by purchase history and other attributes, then design and send from the same system.
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Real-World Impact
More Than $6,500 Raised in Two Days
The Park Fest campaign brought in more than $6,500 across two days through direct donations, ticket round-ups, and QR code gifts. Close to $5,000 of that came in a single night. The $25,000 campaign is still open, and Park Fest alone covered more than a quarter of it.
Thousands of Dollars a Year from Round-Ups
Round-ups don't stop when the party ends. Robyn says they add thousands of dollars every year from people who only came to buy a ticket. For a nonprofit on a tight budget, that is steady money that shows up without a single appeal letter.
A QR Code Outraised the Cash Can
In one 60-second Money Minute, the cash can collected $200 and the campaign QR code collected $300. That is 60% of the money from a code that took five minutes to print.
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A Nonprofit Identity Patrons Can See
Giving now shows up at checkout, in the room, and in the inbox. Patrons see the Park ask the way a nonprofit asks, which is the change Robyn set out to make.
The Vision Ahead
The Park Theatre Foundation marks 25 years as a nonprofit with a celebration at the theatre on December 12, 2026, aimed at longtime supporters and new friends. The next big project is the south wall, a century-old wall that some neighbors call a beautiful patina and others call decay. The board wants it standing for another 100 years. With Ludus Fundraiser, the team can run a campaign for that project the same way it ran Park Fest.
Why Ludus?
Round-ups that run on their own.
Once round-ups are on, every ticket sale becomes a chance to give. Patrons add a few dollars at checkout, and over a year that adds up to thousands for the Park. No appeal letter, no extra work for a staff that already comes in every day and stays almost every night.
Easy for the community to give.
Supporters could give while buying a Park Fest ticket, or scan a QR code from their seat during the Money Minute. No separate donation site to find and no cash required. When giving takes a few seconds, more people do it.
One campaign, one total.
The Park didn't add a donation platform. It built the Park Fest campaign inside the system it already used to sell tickets, so round-ups, QR gifts, and donations all tracked against the same goal.
Email tools a communications pro respects.
Segmented lists and an easy email designer let Robyn send the right appeal to the right patrons without a second system.
Support from real people.
When Robyn joined the board, she brought a long list of questions nobody on staff had thought to ask. She booked a call with the Ludus team and worked through all of it.
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Final Takeaway
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Running a nonprofit venue, community theatre, or arts organization that counts on fundraisers to pay for the next project?
See how Ludus Fundraiser lets you build a fundraising campaign, add round-ups to every ticket, and make it easy for your community to give, all in the same system you sell tickets in.
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