NATI is a Nebraska nonprofit that provides resources, training, and professional community for hundreds of translation and interpretation professionals across the state. The board reached out to Tiempo to build a new website that could replace the half-dozen disconnected tools they were using. One for donations, another for events, a separate member directory, a paid Eventbrite for ticketing. The brief was: one site that does all of this, that the board can update without calling us every time.
The functional requirements
- Member subscriptions. Annual dues, multiple tiers, automatic renewals.
- Donations. One-time and recurring, with receipt emails and tax-deductibility messaging.
- Event ticketing. Conferences, workshops, and member-only events with paid and free tickets.
- Member directory. Searchable, with language pairs and specialties as filters.
- Member self-service. Members log in, edit their own profile, renew their membership, register for events.
- Public content. News, resources, certification info.
The stack
| Function | Plugin / tool |
|---|---|
| Core CMS | WordPress on a managed DigitalOcean Droplet |
| Member subscriptions + tiered access | Paid Memberships Pro |
| Donations | GiveWP (one-time + recurring; Stripe-backed) |
| Event ticketing | The Events Calendar + Event Tickets Plus |
| Member directory | Custom post type + Paid Memberships Pro front-end editing |
| Forms | WPForms |
| Email marketing integration | Mailchimp via the MC4WP connector |
| DNS + CDN | Cloudflare (free tier) |
| Security | Wordfence (free tier) |
| Backups | DigitalOcean weekly Droplet backups + nightly DB dumps to Spaces |
The pieces that took longest
- Paid Memberships Pro ↔ The Events Calendar tying together. Out of the box, member-discounted ticketing requires an add-on and some custom code. We use it heavily. Certain workshops are member-only, others have member discounts.
- The member directory. Building a searchable directory where members can update their own profile (preferred languages, specialty areas, contact info) required a custom post type, a front-end edit form, and a search/filter UI. This is the chunk that’s genuinely “custom development” rather than configuration.
- Recurring donation receipting. GiveWP handles this, but matching donations against members’ renewals (so people don’t double-pay during overlap windows) was a configuration puzzle.
What the board can do without us
That was the original goal of the project. As of 2026:
- Publishing news posts and event listings.
- Adding new event types and ticket tiers.
- Managing member accounts (manual override when needed).
- Exporting member and donation data for board meetings and tax season.
- Updating site content (pages, sidebar, navigation).
What still routes back to me: theme changes, plugin updates, major WordPress upgrades, anything involving the directory’s custom code, and server maintenance.
You can see the site at natihq.org.
If you’re a small nonprofit considering a build like this
The donations + memberships + events combination is one of WordPress’s genuine strong points. I wrote up the broader question of when WordPress is the right call for a small nonprofit in Is WordPress still the right choice for nonprofits in 2026?. If you want to talk about a similar build, drop me a line.