How the National Opera House Uses MonkeyPod to Streamline Nonprofit Operations

Running a nonprofit is already a juggling act — now imagine doing it while restoring a 130-year-old building, wrangling contractors, and dodging asbestos.

That’s daily life for Jonnet Solomon, executive director of the National Opera House in Pittsburgh. Her organization is working to preserve the home of America’s first Black opera company — and with a mission that big, she needs operations behind the scenes to run like clockwork.

That’s where MonkeyPod comes in.

“It helps us to be more efficient with automated features, automated bookkeeping, and reports that we can send out to the people who need them in real time,” Jonnet said. 

We sat down with Jonnet to discuss the challenges of running a nonprofit and how she’s using software to elevate her impact. 

Building an Efficient Donor Management Workflow

One of the critical needs Jonnet was looking to solve with MonkeyPod was creating a more efficient donor management process. 

NOH knows that if someone is engaged with the Opera House in any fashion, they are a potential donor, even if they don’t make a donation today. So they needed a way to track that engagement so they can take action on it in the future.

“One way we're using MonkeyPod is just as a relationship management system, and it's perfect for that.”

“Every single person that we come in contact with, the first step in our workflow is to enter that person into MonkeyPod.” Jonnet said. “If I met you today and I talked about the opera house, you're going in MonkeyPod. And then when they do something, we track it in MonkeyPod.”

This type of tracking empowers everyone at NOH to be involved in the donor cultivation process. It also helps them spot highly engaged individuals that are ideal potential donors.

Analyzing Donor Data

Once someone does make a donation, Jonnet can use MonkeyPod’s reports to analyze that data and determine how to steward those relationships. One of the key reports she relies on is the Top Donors report.

“Every day I look at the top donors, not just to make sure we stay engaged with them, but also to see who's not the top donors,” Jonnet said. 

If she sees someone in her community that she knows could be higher up on the list, Jonnet prioritizes outreach to them. Between restoration activities, she can out to those individuals to say, "Why aren't you the top donor?"

“I can reach out to them to say, ‘Hey, we're still here. We're not there yet. We need your help.’”

Effective Email Communication

Individual outreach to individual donors is great, but it can be time consuming. That’s why NOH leans on MonkeyPod’s email outreach to communicate to their entire network. 

And because MonkeyPod is tracking the performance of those emails, Jonnet and her team can constantly improve their communication, ensuring that they are providing engaging content to their community. 

“I love the insights and the reporting on my mailing lists. When I send a campaign, I can see who opened it, who didn't open it, the churn, the bounce-back rate,” Jonnet said.

“It helps us to understand who we are engaging with and who wants to be engaged with. That's a huge help.”

Keeping the Books and Tracking Budgets

In addition to managing their relationships in MonkeyPod, NOH is also tracking their finances in MonkeyPod’s nonprofit accounting system. 

“We have set up our operating budget, our construction budget, our project budget. Everything is in MonkeyPod, and we're tracking all of our accounting, financial events in the software.”

This makes things very efficient for NOH. Whenever a donation comes in through MonkeyPod, it’s automatically recorded on the books without any duplicative busywork. They don’t have to worry about keeping two separate databases in sync. 

Because it’s all one system, they can be sure their data is always up to date and accurate, and ensure everyone in the organization is on the same page.

“MonkeyPod helps The National Opera House achieve our goals by number one, reducing our tech stack. We can use one software for many solutions,” Jonnet said. 

“It also helps us with our mission of transparency. By using one software platform, no one has questions about anything. No one has a question about what's going on, who the contractors are, what we're paying people, because it’s all in MonkeyPod.” 

“We can open what we're doing to our board and our partners without compromising the data.”

Saying Goodbye to Spreadsheet Land

Before MonkeyPod, the National Opera House was still doing all this work – managing donors, tracking their finances, tracking budgets. It was just all done in manually created spreadsheets that were quite cumbersome.

“In a previous life, we lived in spreadsheets. And when you’re living in spreadsheet land, you cannot get the insights that you can get from MonkeyPod,” Jonnet said. 

“Yes, you can track everything in a perfect little cell, and it looks great, and you think you're doing something spectacular. But until you've put it all into an application like MonkeyPod, you don't know what you're missing.”

If you’re living in spreadsheet land and looking for an escape, schedule a demo with our team. We’d love to talk through how we can help you improve donor communications, get a better handle on your finances, and so much more. 

If you’d like to support the National Opera House and their mission, visit www.nationaloperahouse.org/.