How the Arts Can Strengthen Their Educational Programs with Leap + CourseStorm

Written in collaboration with CourseStorm, inspired by this article

Arts and theater organizations are masters at creating meaningful experiences with small but mighty teams. But keeping education programs, performances, ticketing, and patron engagement unified behind the scenes requires the right technology, especially for organizations ready to deepen their patron relationships and scale their impact. 

That’s where Leap Event Technology comes in! As an end-to-end ecosystem of ticketing, marketing, and CRM for arts organizations, Leap gives teams the operational foundation they need. Additionally, this solution seamlessly integrates with partners to build the perfect CRM for your organizational needs. For example, when integrated with CourseStorm, your education program gains a seamless registration workflow that feeds directly into Leap’s centralized patron records, creating a single, powerful source of truth for your entire organization.

One organization that exemplifies this approach is Raleigh Little Theatre, which reaches nearly 30,000 patrons every year across performances, camps, workshops, and classes. Their staff recently shared how Leap and CourseStorm work together to support their mission, and their insights form a practical roadmap for any arts education program built around CourseStorm’s “Five Pillars of a Thriving Arts Education Program”. Below, we’ve highlighted how the combination of Leap and CourseStorm strengthen each pillar and unlock a connected, data-driven model for growing your educational programs.

Pillar #1: Connected Catalog

Raleigh Little Theatre listens closely to its community through surveys, class evaluations, and ongoing research, which allows them to design new classes and productions that feel both relevant and personal to their audience. Leap helps by providing a clear, 360-degree view of each patron’s relationship with the organization across ticketing, classes, donations, engagement history, and more. That way, you can more easily spot trends and make strategic moves.  “We ask [students and parents] what classes would you like to see,” said Director of Education, Terra Hodge. “All of a sudden you see that everyone’s into collage or a certain musical, and you start thinking about how to tap into that.”

Now, combine this richer understanding of patron behavior with CourseStorm’s powerful catalog tools, and you get an educational program as strong as Raleigh Little Theatre’s. Based on their insights, this theatre offers fresh courses like sensory-friendly productions, adult creativity classes, and backstage volunteer opportunities. CourseStorm makes it simple with an easy course builder, quick duplication, and flexible customization options for sessions and forms. When working together, Leap illuminates audience demand and CourseStorm helps implement your ideas, ensuring your catalog remains in step with what your community wants and needs most.

Pillar #2: Stellar Student Experience

The patron experience at Raleigh Little Theatre begins well before anyone steps into a classroom or the theatre. Both Leap and CourseStorm help ensure that this journey feels personal, accessible, and unified. With Leap serving as the organization’s central CRM, every interaction — whether it’s about a class, a performance, or a donation — is connected because all patron data lives in one unified profile. This allows staff to greet families by name, tailor email messaging, and map out a journey that sets students up for success.

On the CourseStorm side, signups come effortlessly with friends and family registration, automated waitlists, and reminders. When those interactions flow into Leap’s platform, both systems work together to create a smooth experience online. The result is a seamless path from website to classroom to recurring participation, empowering Raleigh Little Theatre to deepen relationships with its students and support them every step of the way.

Pillar #3: Supportive Infrastructure

Even a small staff can manage thousands of attendees when their systems are built to support them, and Raleigh Little Theatre has achieved this with Leap and CourseStorm. Leap streamlines everything related to ticketing, reporting, segmentation, and communications so staff aren’t rebuilding events from scratch or piecing together data across multiple tools. “I can duplicate performances, which has been so helpful. I don’t have to rebuild every price or ticket type each time,” stated Box Office Supervisor, Mercedes Ruiz. “The reporting is great too. I can pull daily, weekly, or custom reports, and even set them to email automatically.” Automated reporting, integrated membership tracking, and centralized patron records all give their staff more time to focus on their artistic and educational mission.

CourseStorm complements this with intuitive admin features like custom forms, dynamic rosters, single-click student transfers or refunds, and customizable instructor access. When talking about these CourseStorm features, Hodge shared, “You can ask the questions you actually need like accommodations, medical information, or emergency contacts for summer camps. It saves us a lot of time.” Because CourseStorm is integrated directly with Leap, staff no longer have to reconcile multiple spreadsheets or transfer information manually. Everything flows into their CRM automatically. With accurate and unified patron information, their organization can work smarter rather than harder!

Pillar #4: Program Integration

Raleigh Little Theatre treats education and performance as interconnected parts of a larger artistic ecosystem. “They aren’t two separate entities,” noted Hodge. “We want our audiences to take advantage of our classes and our class participants to come see our shows.” For instance, before a recent showing of Mad Libs Live!, a highly participatory musical, they hosted a family improv workshop to prepare attendees to participate in the performance. In addition, they provide educational resources such as study guides for school matinees and shared teaching experiences through initiatives like Teens on Stage and their Creative Team Workshop Series, where production staff instruct on directing and design.

With CourseStorm feeding class data into Leap’s arts software, the integration allows organizations to see how education programming directly contributes to audience building and long-term patron loyalty. Popular classes can inspire related productions, and hit productions can inspire new workshops, youth camps, or behind-the-scenes learning opportunities.

Pillar #5: Strategies to Scale

Raleigh Little Theatre’s long-term growth is driven by loyal patrons coming back year after year. Leap supports this by giving them the ability to track how patrons evolve — from first-time ticket buyers to class participants, from students to volunteers, from one-time donors to members. This allows staff to personalize and segment their outreach, as well as design programming that nurtures loyalty at every stage. Personalized communications, targeted campaigns, student initiatives, and donor cultivation pathways all become easier when you can see exactly how someone engages with your organization.

With CourseStorm integrated into Leap, educational programs become part of that long-term narrative, enabling staff to offer tailored class recommendations, early registration access to returning students, and friendly reminders that keep families engaged year after year. Plus, it’s easier than ever to offer discounted tickets to acting students or invite audience members to attend a single-day course. CourseStorm’s auto-marketing features help keep your initiatives top of mind, especially when paired with Leap’s CRM insights and segmentation tools. Together, the two systems help arts organizations scale with intention, building programs that serve today’s needs while laying the foundation for decades of community impact.

Learning From Raleigh Little Theatre’s Success

Raleigh Little Theatre’s success is rooted in connection across departments, across programs, and across generations of patrons. Sharing how this organization has impacted her, Ruiz highlighted, “When I was little, I went to shows here with my grandfather. Then I took classes, became a teaching artist, and now I’m on staff.” Leap Event Technology provides the infrastructure that makes these connections possible, and CourseStorm becomes even more powerful when plugged into Leap’s patron CRM software for theatre and arts organizations. The result is a unified, efficient, and data-informed approach that strengthens every pillar of an arts education program.

If you’re already using Leap for ticketing or patron management, you’re perfectly positioned to get more out of your education programs through integrating our platform with CourseStorm! And if you’re ready to bring your arts education and performance programs closer together, there has never been a better time to build your next chapter with a system designed specifically for growing arts organizations.