Elevating the Mission while Reducing Admin

Digital Transformation at St. Luke's

Elevating the Mission while Reducing Admin

Digital Transformation at St. Luke's

As the oldest surviving church in Virginia, St. Luke’s Historic Museum and Cemetery is a multifaceted organization that serves the public as a tourist destination, historic landmark, active, open cemetery, and a venue for weddings and events.

St Luke’s Mission

The Mission of Historic St. Luke’s Restoration is to preserve, protect, and promote this historic church landmark and its collections, documents, history, graveyard, and surroundings.

St. Luke’s recent efforts to restore and preserve the church and cemetery, along with the investments in branding and programming led to significant growth. Their dedicated team now hosts thousands of visitors and scores of events every year.

Enhancing St. Luke’s Online Presence and Event Management

Hofbauer Consulting began its partnership with St. Luke’s in 2019 by redesigning the organization’s website to launch a refreshed brand and feature its expanded programming and offerings.

However, as St. Luke’s flourished, it faced a challenge that came with growth – managing an increasing volume of registrants and ticket sales for its diverse range of events and offerings. With special events and workshops becoming increasingly popular, the need for a digital event management system became evident.

Hofbauer Consulting Empowers St. Luke’s with Seamless Digital Event Management

With a clear understanding of St. Luke’s mission and how it operated, Hofbauer Consulting was primed to help pinpoint the need and develop the requirements for digital solution for managing their events. This solution was designed to handle the full range of their events, including educational programming, tours, and weddings.

The first step was to create an event management system that seamlessly integrated into St. Luke’s website. The system Hofbauer Consulting built not only facilitated online registration and ticket sales but also processed payments, managed detailed registrant data, and generated QR-enabled tickets.

No system, no matter how good, is a field of dreams. Just because you build it doesn’t mean the team will use it. After the initial implementation of the system, Hofbauer Consulting didn’t simply walk away. Recognizing the importance of training and digital transformation, Hofbauer Consulting conducted and produced comprehensive training sessions for St. Luke’s staff. These trainings ensured everyone, from event managers to gift shop attendants, was well-equipped to handle the new digital event management system.

Hofbauer Consulting went beyond training the team on the new system; we understood the equal importance of a smooth transition from legacy systems to an end-to-end, digital events management platform. By creating custom integrations for the gift shop’s point-of-sale system and offering advice on interim processes, we helped bridge gaps and ease the transition for St. Luke’s staff.

Hofbauer Consulting’s Systems Unlock Operational Efficiencies and Scale at St. Luke’s

The partnership between St. Luke’s and Hofbauer Consulting is a profound showcase of how technology can elevate the operations of even the most unique and multifaceted organizations. Registrants and patrons now enjoy a user-friendly, self-service experience and the organization’s staff have the tools and knowledge to streamline operations – reducing administrative burden, especially for large events.

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Increase In Ticket Orders

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Increase in Site Visitors

Behind the scenes, one of the most significant benefits of the system and digital transformation was improved handling of event-related sales data. The backend of the system Hofbauer Consulting built allowed St. Luke’s to automatically capture and parse event and program-related data. This not only streamlined accounting and financial tracking, but also enhanced the reporting for grants and funding applications.

With the investments St. Luke’s made in its digital infrastructure and transformation, the team can focus less on admin and more on its mission and preserving the legacy of this storied, spiritual institution.