Case Study: How New York’s Lincoln Center runs virtual fundraisers with Zoom and zkipster

10/06/2020 2 minutes to read

The Lincoln Center special events team successfully charted a path forward by creating engaging virtual experiences.

The team leveraged the zkipster guest management platform and its powerful and easy to use plug-and-play integration with Zoom.

Challenge: Host a virtual gala with 29 tables and guarantee a flawless guest experience

During the pandemic, the Lincoln Center team faced a nuanced set of challenges that their guest management platform needed to solve:

In the absence of in-real-life events, the special events team at Lincoln Center wanted to bring their community together, support artists in their network, and offer a personalized donor experience.
The team conceptualized a complex virtual gala with 29 virtual tables; hosting a one hour event at each table, assigning an artist per table, and asking supporters to invite friends and family to join them.
Lincoln Center wanted to send on-brand, customized email invitations, ensure registration was private and secure, track RSVPs with zkipster, collect payments with their in-house portal 1ShoppingCart, and use Zoom to enable the gala virtually.
The team needed a solution to manage virtual table allocation, capture new contacts, manage guest registration, and distribute custom links to join via Zoom.

Red event graphic for Lincoln Center's "Connecting for Culture" virtual gala on May 21. Circular text emphasizes unity and support for the arts. — Email header of the event invitation

Solution: A powerful ensemble of different features from zkipster and Zoom

A sequence of four minimalistic icons shows an envelope, connected circles, a check mark, and a graph. Each icon is outlined in a simple design.

Invites
Lincoln Center creates an event in zkipster, designs an email campaign with the plug and play Zoom integration, and links it to the shared table function.

Screenshot of a form editing interface. The main section shows a form with a pink header. A magnified section highlights "Auto-Register in Zoom" toggle set to "On". Tone is functional and technical. — The zkipster email invitation builder with the plug-and-play Zoom connector

Registration
When a new guest registers, they get added to their pre-assigned table in the zkipster seating feature and sent a personalized confirmation link to Zoom.

Alt text: "Web interface for 'Connecting for Culture' event, depicting a seating chart. Circles numbered 5 to 10 represent seats, with seat 5 selected. A form beside it prompts for first name, last name, email, and phone number. 'Save Seat' button is visible. Clean, modern design." — The shared table function in the zkipster backend

Check-in
Prior to the gala, guests receive a reminder email from zkipster with a link to the Zoom meeting that prompts them to join the host, artist and guests at their table.

A woman in a black dress sings passionately beside a pianist in a cozy room. A plant and framed art add warmth. Seven people are visible in the virtual call top panel. — The shared tables function on the Zoom frontend

Post-event
A post-event report includes guest RSVPs, their virtual check-ins, and a seating chart PDF with final table allocation including shows and no-shows.

"Making the jump from live to virtual has been seamless with zkipster, and we’re excited about new opportunities we have for flexible event formats."

TAMAR PODELL | LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Next steps for Lincoln Center

For their Fall events, Lincoln Center will fine-tune their virtual workflows and explore zkipster’s session management feature to optimize virtual table allocation further. And they are looking into integrating zkipster with their main client database to ensure that all live, hybrid and virtual event signals funnel into one place.