TL;DR: The Children's Orchestra Society runs registration, payments, signed consent forms, class rosters, donor email, and its concert calendar through its own website, and the office staff never has to open a payment processor or a database to do any of it. A site like this typically costs $35,000 to $77,000 to build once. COS got two complete rebuilds in two years, and both were covered by its EvolveWeb plan with no separate development fees.
The Children's Orchestra Society has taught young musicians on Long Island since 1962, from Pre-Kinder through advanced chamber ensembles. A program that size generates a lot of paperwork: registrations, payment plans, consent forms, financial aid applications, rosters, donor records, and a full concert season. For years, much of it lived in separate places and needed staff to move it by hand.
This case study covers the second complete redesign Mountain Digital delivered for COS. The goal went beyond a new look. The site had to become the place where the organization's daily work actually happens: registration, payments, forms, rosters, donor relationships, and the event calendar.
It's written for nonprofit leaders, school administrators, and anyone running a program where the website has to do real work. It shows how a site can take on administrative tasks without asking staff to learn new software. (For the bigger picture on nonprofit budgets and channels, see the nonprofit marketing guide.)
The client and the brief
COS runs more than a dozen programs across orchestras, ensembles, chamber music, musicianship, and technique classes. Families often enroll more than one child, each in several classes. The office staff is small, and nobody on it is a software specialist.
The redesign had one rule that shaped every decision: staff should never have to log into a payment processor, a database, or a developer tool to do their jobs. Everything had to work inside the website dashboard they already knew, or in spreadsheets.
Registration that does the math
The 2026-27 registration form is a four-step, 56-field system covering all 19 class offerings. Parents choose classes for each child, and the form prices the selection as they go.
The pricing is where it gets complicated. A second child in the same family gets a sibling discount. Families can pay in full, pay half now, or put down a deposit and pay the balance later. The rules depend on which classes are selected and on whether the child is the first or an additional registration.
Discounts are calculated on the server, not only in the browser, from the class prices stored on the form. The amount charged to the card always matches the rules, even if someone tampers with the page. Each registration is recorded under one family contact, and each child's details are added to that family's history. A second child never overwrites the first.
Balances created a second need. Staff set the amount a family owes, which doesn't always match the original registration, and send a link. The payment page has the parent enter that amount, then shows a confirmation screen with the total before the card is charged. The pay button shows the exact figure. Why make a parent guess what they're about to pay?
Forms that replace the paper folder
The site handles the documents a music school used to collect on paper: a press release and media consent form with an on-screen signature, a confidential financial aid application, merit scholarship and Majors Program applications, audition and Discovery Competition applications, absence requests, a children's choir interest form, and a donor survey.
The consent form alone has collected 113 submissions. Each signed form is stored with the entry, and the rest of its information flows straight to a spreadsheet the office can search.
Spreadsheets staff already know how to use
Most nonprofit staff are comfortable in a spreadsheet, and that became the design principle for administration. Registrations, consent forms, and financial aid applications each send their data automatically to a dedicated spreadsheet as they come in. Records submitted before the connection existed were copied over so nothing was missing.
Each spreadsheet keeps its raw data on a hidden tab and gives staff a clean, live copy to work from. Staff can't accidentally break the data feed by sorting or typing in the wrong place.
The registration spreadsheet does more. A class enrollment view breaks each family's class selections into 19 separate class columns, each with a checkmark and a live student count in the header. Saved roster views for every class show only the students enrolled in it, and new registrations appear in the right rosters automatically. Class rosters used to take manual sorting. Now they update themselves.
A donor system built around relationships
COS runs its fundraising through the website. The site hosts several giving pages: a general fund, a named scholarship fund, a documentary film fundraiser, a Giving Tuesday campaign, and a peer-to-peer page where supporters raise money from their own networks. Donors can give monthly, dedicate gifts in someone's honor, cover processing fees, see their giving history, and receive annual tax receipts. A donor wall recognizes supporters publicly.
Behind the giving pages sits a contact database of more than 2,000 people, organized by who they are: parents, students, alumni, alumni parents, faculty, supporters, and donors. Donors are grouped by where they are in their relationship with COS: new, repeat, major-gift, and lapsed.
Each group triggers its own automated email sequence. A first-time donor gets a welcome series. A repeat donor is thanked in a way that reflects their history. A donor who crosses into major-gift territory is recognized as one. The same system sends the COS newsletter and manages a ticket-alert list for the few concerts that require tickets.
None of this runs on a rented email service. COS previously sent its newsletters through Constant Contact, which meant the organization's most valuable asset, its list of families, donors, and supporters, lived on someone else's platform and cost more every year as it grew. Mountain Digital moved the entire list to a system hosted on COS's own website. The contacts, their history, and every email sent now belong to COS, with no per-contact fees and no risk of losing access if a vendor changes its pricing or plans. (More on why that matters in owning your email list instead of renting it.)
Calendar, parent portal, and the rest of the family experience
The event calendar holds the whole season, with 55 upcoming dates across classes, concerts, recitals, and deadlines. Families can add any event to Google, Apple, or Outlook calendars, or subscribe to the full season. The homepage's "Next on stage" box reads from the calendar, so when a date changes, one edit updates every page. The calendar was also rebuilt to run on custom code, so it no longer depends on outside calendar software.
The parent portal gives current families one place for what they need week to week: forms, sheet music for each ensemble, the season calendar, the Saturday class schedule in a phone-friendly format, and announcements.
The site also carries COS's 50th anniversary documentary, set up so search engines can display its chapters, credits, and award recognition.
Why a second redesign
Most organizations treat a website as a project that ends at launch. COS's site works more like a staff member that grows with the organization. The first redesign modernized the public site. The second rebuilt it around how COS actually operates, as registration, payments, forms, and fundraising moved online.
That is only possible under an ongoing partnership, where the web team keeps learning how the organization works. Each new need, from a payment link to a class roster, becomes part of the site instead of another workaround.
What a site like this costs to build
The estimate comes from published 2026 pricing, applied feature by feature to what the COS site actually does.
Three industry pricing guides set the baseline. Freshy's WordPress pricing guide puts substantial business builds at $8,000 to $35,000 and says custom builds with complex integrations routinely exceed $25,000. FatLab Web Support publishes custom plugin work at $2,000 to $6,000 or more and system integrations at $3,000 to $12,000 or more. GetDevDone's guide names CRM and form logic, migration, accessibility, and testing as the factors that set a project's final cost.
Applying those rates to each part of the COS site:
| What was built | Typical one-time cost |
|---|---|
| Custom design, page templates, and the full content site, with content migration | $12,000 to $25,000 |
| Registration system with conditional pricing, sibling discounts, and payment plans | $6,000 to $12,000 |
| Signed consent form, eight applications and requests, and a card payment page | $3,000 to $6,000 |
| Spreadsheet reporting for three departments, with self-updating class rosters | $2,500 to $6,000 |
| Online giving, a segmented donor database, automated donor emails, and the move off Constant Contact | $6,000 to $15,000 |
| Custom event calendar, parent portal, and ticket alerts | $4,000 to $10,000 |
| Technical SEO and structured data | $1,500 to $3,000 |
| One complete build | $35,000 to $77,000 |
Two complete builds in two years would put that at $70,000 to $150,000 in development fees. Some work from the first build could be reused in the second, so the real figure would likely land toward the lower end. Even then, it comes to well over $50,000. That doesn't count annual maintenance, which Freshy estimates at $1,500 to $6,000 per year for a standard business site. (The same math at small-business scale is in what a small business website really costs.)
Under EvolveWeb, COS paid no development fees for either build. Both redesigns, along with hosting, security, maintenance, and every change in between, were covered by the monthly plan.
The takeaway
This project covered registration with conditional pricing and payment plans, online forms with signatures, automatic spreadsheet reporting, self-updating class rosters, a segmented donor database with automated email sequences, and a dynamic event calendar and parent portal. The common thread is that every feature fits the tools and skills COS staff already have.
For any nonprofit weighing a redesign, the useful question is less "what should the site look like?" and more "what work should it take off our desk?" A site built around that question keeps paying off long after launch.
Key takeaways
- A site like COS's would typically cost $35,000 to $77,000 to build once. COS received two complete rebuilds in two years, both covered under its EvolveWeb plan with no separate development fees.
- A program website can run registration, payments, and paperwork as well as marketing.
- Complex pricing rules belong on the server, where the charged amount always matches the rules.
- Spreadsheets staff already use can serve as the admin dashboard, with rosters that update themselves.
- Donor email works best when it reflects where each donor is in their relationship with the organization.
- Moving email off a rented service and onto the organization's own website puts the contact list, and its history, under the organization's control.
QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK
COS Case Study FAQ
Based on published 2026 agency pricing applied feature by feature, a site with this scope typically costs $35,000 to $77,000 to build once. That covers custom design and content migration, a registration system with conditional pricing and payment plans, signed online forms, spreadsheet reporting, online giving with a segmented donor database and automated email, a custom event calendar, a parent portal, and technical SEO.
COS is on an EvolveWeb plan, a monthly partnership that includes the initial build, hosting, security, maintenance, ongoing changes, and full redesigns when the organization’s needs change. Both complete rebuilds, two years apart, were covered by the plan with no separate development bill.
Yes, because it was designed around what the staff already knows. Nobody has to log into a payment processor or a database. Staff work in the website dashboard they already use and in spreadsheets that fill themselves, including class rosters that update as families register.
On a rented email service, the list lives on someone else’s platform and the bill grows with every contact. Moving it to a system hosted on the organization’s own website means the contacts, their history, and every email sent belong to the organization, with no per-contact fees.