Case Study: How a non-profit doubled publication sales with FormPay
Written by: Melody Ma
Founder, FormPay
Updated: May 24, 2024
Published: May 24, 2024
Chinatown Today is a non-profit organization based in Vancouver’s Chinatown, dedicated to sharing Chinatown’s stories – past, present, and future. Part of this is educating the public about all things Chinatown, including community history, needs, and events. This also manifests in their physical publication, Chinatown Stories, which gives these stories a tangible presence in the community. Once each volume was published, Chinatown Today needed to make sure there was a way to get it in the hands of readers. We sat down with board member, Russell Chiong, to learn about Chinatown Stories and how FormPay made it easier for them to sell their latest volume.
The stories behind the stories and how FormPay got involved
At Chinatown Today, we created Chinatown Stories out of a desire to create, collect, and share stories borne out of Chinatown, and to bear witness to the rapid changes our community faces. Chinatown Stories has been one way we’ve been able to preserve and share Chinatown’s stories, past, present, and future.
For our first volume in 2017, we were able to take stories that we had originally published online and bring them to the community with a physical publication. Since then, we’ve published another four volumes of Chinatown Stories filled with community contributions exclusive to the physical magazine.
In the past, we typically relied on in-person sales at events and stocking Chinatown Storiesat local retailers, with sales driven mostly by word of mouth. With Chinatown Stories Volume 5: The Bridges Between Us, we wanted to ramp up our online promotion and make it easier for our followers to purchase copies from us directly. That’s when we found FormPay.
“We had tried many other ecommerce sales methods before FormPay, but FormPay’s simplicity of use and customization provided possibilities that other options didn’t have, such as bundling and pickup and delivery options.”
Favorite features of FormPay
We’d tried other online sales methods before FormPay, but FormPay’s simplicity of use and customization provided possibilities that other options didn’t have, such as bundling items, and pickup and delivery options.
FormPay’s transaction-based pricing fit the budget of Chinatown Today as a small non-profit, while its existing integration with Stripe for credit card processing made it easy for us to switch to FormPay.
In addition, FormPay offered the ability for supporters to add a donation to their purchase, which has allowed us to raise funds that support our programming outside of the publication. And finally, FormPay’s order dashboard is easy to use, making our order fulfillment and recording process much easier than under previous platforms.
“FormPay’s order dashboard is easy to use, making our order fulfillment and recording process much easier than under previous platforms.”
How FormPay helped spread the stories through increased sales
After Chinatown Today started using FormPay, we saw a significant increase in sales, but because of FormPay’s simplicity of use, these increases in sales didn’t mean that we had a significantly increased workload. This meant that we could spend more time on our core activities and programming, while FormPay took care of the rest.
“After Chinatown Today started using FormPay, we saw a significant increase in sales.”
To purchase Chinatown Storiesfrom Chinatown Today, buy here.