Aspen Gay Ski Week maximizes funds and minimizes fees with Lightspeed
Aspen Gay Ski Week (AGSW) is a week-long gay ski event that has taken place in Aspen, Colorado, for 47 years. It's one of Aspen's largest LGBTQ+ non-profit fundraisers, with 3,750+ participants annually. All of the funds raised help support AspenOUT’s free mental health counseling, college scholarships and grants to nonprofit organizations in the LGBTQ+ community. Partnering with Lightspeed helps them keep more of their ticket sales to keep investing in their community.
Business type:
Nonprofit
Products used:
Lightspeed eCom
Lightspeed Payments
Location:
Colorado, USA
Lightspeed eCom helps Aspen Gay Ski Week raise more funds
$23k+
Revenue recovered from abandoned carts
$100k+
Processed on a single day without a hitch
18%
Saved per ticket on service fees
The challenge: ticket sale fees eating into nonprofit funds
Lukas Volk, the Marketing and Events coordinator for AGSW, knows the importance of optimizing revenue in the nonprofit sector. As he explains, “In a nonprofit world, it’s important to maximize donations, operate on a small budget and give the most back.”
But before switching to Lightspeed, AGSW had a big drain on their budget: ticket fees. They used a traditional third-party ticketing platform to sell tickets for their annual event that charged a significant amount per ticket sale. This did not leave them with much profit in return for their fund.
Taking matters into their own hands seemed to be the way forward, but there was a hurdle: Aspen Gay Ski Week’s existing website ranked highly in terms of SEO, and had been custom-built in WordPress.
While they wanted a new ecommerce solution for tickets, they didn’t want to impact their rankings or give up their existing code by migrating to a whole new domain and platform.
“Traditional ticketing platforms would deduct a significant percentage of our ticket sales. That's when we switched to Lightspeed eCom's shopping cart to sell our tickets. They are easy to use and don’t charge any unnecessary fees.”
Lukas Volk, Marketing and Events Coordinator, Aspen Gay Ski Week
The solution: a new, cost-effective way to sell tickets
Instead of migrating to a new site entirely, the team was searching to integrate a shopping cart onto their existing website.
Luckily, Lightspeed eCom has the capability to do so quite easily. They were able to add a new shopping cart to their existing site and started selling event tickets in no time, cutting out the middleman taking expensive fees.
AGSW uses Lightspeed Payments to process payments through their new store. With an attractive percentage rate, Lightspeed Payments allows them to save on extra expenses that they could put toward their fundraising efforts.
Given ASGW’s popularity and the sale of both individual and weekly passes, significant revenue is generated all at once when tickets first become available for purchase. Lightspeed Payments releases all of these funds quickly, regardless of the amount and without any issues.
“Lightspeed Payments makes our accountant very happy. The rate is very cost-effective, and we get all of our funds released in a timely manner without any holds or delays.”
Lukas Volk, Marketing and Events Coordinator, Aspen Gay Ski Week
The result: maximizing funds for the LGBTQ+ community while continuing to grow
Thanks to Lightspeed, ASGW can now sell their tickets through a user-friendly online store and save on additional costs.
“The features that keep getting added on [to] Lightspeed eCom are great; every year, the platform just keeps getting better,” says Lukas.
Armed with an intuitive, cost-effective ecommerce platform, they’ve been able to focus further on raising funds and expanding their event into different areas.