A new kind of gala platform

Plan a gala like you’ve done it
a hundred times.

Patronly is the AI co-pilot for nonprofit event chairs. It learns your event, tells you what to do next, and writes the things you didn’t want to write.

Private beta · taking 12 nonprofits this season
your event, by Tuesday
Setup Coach
47 days to gala
Set the date and venue
Saturday, October 17 · River Oaks Country Club
Draft sponsorship tiers
5 tiers from $1,500 to $25,000
Invite 12 corporate sponsors
4 confirmed · 8 awaiting reply
Upload the venue floor plan
Drag your PDF — Patronly will resize and layout 17 tables
Send captain links
12 captains will get a one-tap invite
You’ve got this. Continue →
no Slack required

I was told I’d “handle the gala.” Nobody told me that meant fourteen spreadsheets, three vendors, and an inbox full of captains who already forgot they said yes.

Event chair, second year, $4M nonprofit
i.

Volunteers rotate. The work doesn’t.

Last year’s chair stepped down. This year’s chair starts from a blank inbox. Every gala rebuilds what every other gala already figured out.

ii.

Existing tools are bookkeepers.

They store what you tell them. They don’t tell you what’s missing. The chair learns the platform faster than they learn how to run a gala — and neither was the point.

iii.

The stakes are real.

Galas raise the budget that funds the year. A small process gap — an unconfirmed sponsor, a missed dietary form — costs real dollars. Volunteers shouldn’t carry that alone.

The Setup Coach

A guide who already knows
what your event needs.

Most nonprofit tools open with a blank form. Patronly opens with the next three things to do — ranked by deadline, by impact, by what you’ll regret skipping.

01

The next-best action, always

The Coach reads your event state — guests, tables, sponsors, captains — and surfaces the work that actually moves the needle this week.

02

Memory across galas

When the 2027 chair logs in, the Coach already knows what worked in 2026. No more re-inventing what last year’s team figured out.

03

Drafts that sound like you

Captain emails, sponsor reminders, day-of timelines — generated, then polished by you in seconds. Not from scratch. Not from a template.

patronly.ai / coach
YWCPA Annual Trailblazer Luncheon
Oct 17, 202647 days out
Good morning, Khalil. You’re ahead of last year — here’s what’s next.
i.
Confirm the floor plan with the venue
River Oaks moved your tables last year. Here’s the email that worked then — review and send.
Review →
ii.
8 sponsors awaiting reply
Most respond after a second touch. We drafted the nudge.
Review →
iii.
Dietary forms for 41 guests
Patronly will email captains a one-tap form for their tables.
Send →
How it works

Three things Patronly does
that nothing else does.

i.

An onboarding that thinks

Five questions about your event. The Coach drafts your sponsorship structure, your table layout, your timeline. You review and tune. You’re live in an afternoon.

  • Tiers proposed from your fundraising target
  • Tables and capacities matched to guest estimate
  • Timeline reverse-engineered from event date
ii.

A guide, not a control panel

Every visit opens with the next-best three or four actions for this event, today. Dismiss what you’ve done; snooze what isn’t ready; the Coach keeps the rest warm.

  • Ranked by deadline, blocking impact, effort
  • Each card opens the right module pre-filled
  • Telemetry tunes the order over time
iii.

The night itself, handled

Floor plans, kiosk check-in, captain portals, walk-up seating, dietary capture, post-event reporting — the operational pieces that turn a great gala into one your guests remember.

  • Tablet check-in with floor-map highlights
  • QR codes route guests to their tables
  • Reports ready before the band stops playing
The evening of

Forty minutes before
guests arrive, you
finally exhale.

The floor plan is set. The check-in tablets are awake. The captains know their tables. The seating chart matches the place cards.

This is the part Patronly was built for. Not the spreadsheets. The moment when months of work falls quiet, and you remember why you said yes.

two months out
Your first session with the Coach
Five questions. A complete event scaffolded by lunch.
one month out
Captain links go out
Each table gets a one-tap portal. No passwords. No login frustration.
the week before
Place cards print themselves
Final guest list, sorted by table, formatted for your stationer.
forty minutes before
Quiet
The kiosks are ready. The floor plan glows on the screen. You exhale.
the next morning
A complete event report, waiting
Attendance, no-shows by table, sponsor revenue, follow-up drafts.
Questions we get

Honest answers, since you asked.

Is Patronly a CRM?i.

No. Patronly is built specifically for galas — the planning, the night itself, the follow-up. If you need long-term donor relationship management, keep your CRM. Patronly hands off cleanly with a guest export.

What happens to my data between events?ii.

It stays right where it is, tenant-isolated, ready for next year. When your 2027 event chair logs in, the Coach already knows what worked last time.

Do my volunteers need to learn the platform?iii.

No. Volunteer captains and sponsors get token-gated portals — no account, no password, no manual. Open the email, two taps, done.

How is this different from Greater Giving or OneCause?iv.

Those are powerful, mature platforms built for professional event teams. Patronly is built for the volunteer chair and the small development staff who actually run most galas. We trade scope for guidance.

What does it cost?v.

We’re finalizing pricing with our private beta tenants. The shape: annual subscription for multi-event nonprofits, single-event option for one-night-a-year galas. Beta tenants get founding pricing locked in.

Who built this?vi.

A Houston-based team with thirty years of nonprofit technology between them. Currently in production with three live nonprofits whose galas raised over $1.4M combined this season.

Run your next gala
like the one before it.

Twelve nonprofits will join Patronly this beta cohort. Tell us about your event — we’ll be in touch within a week.

No spam, ever. We respond personally.