Before District360, Georgetown BID’s donor flow ran on manual invoices, membership signups sat in a queue, and assessment data lived in separate spreadsheets. Today, payments process themselves, new members enroll automatically from the website, and every team works from one connected platform.
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Since 2020, Georgetown BID has partnered with District360 to build the technology backbone of the organization, connecting donor management, membership enrollment, assessment data, payments, and communications in one environment.
A structured data environment with clean account and contact management. Assessment data imports for economic development. A Stripe-powered payment flow for donations and memberships. Website-to-platform integration for automatic enrollment. Mailchimp automation for receipts, renewals, and outreach. Shared infrastructure extended to Georgetown Heritage under separate branding.
Every donor request now carries an embedded payment link, which eliminated manual invoicing entirely. Membership signups from the website create records and process payment in a single step. Assessment data flows directly into the platform for the economic development team. Communications moved from Pardot to Mailchimp, connected to live donor and member records.
The City of Georgetown BID is a non-profit organization that protects and improves one of Washington, D.C.’s most recognized commercial districts. The fifty-person team works with property owners, members, donors, and a partner organization, Georgetown Heritage, to keep the district welcoming, well-maintained, and worth investing in.
The BID had Salesforce, but it was essentially uncustomized. Accounts and contacts existed, but there was no structured way to manage memberships, track assessment data for economic development, or connect what lived there to the work happening across the organization. Each function had its own workaround.
Donations were the most visible bottleneck. When the team sent fifteen donor solicitation emails, fifteen separate invoices had to be created by hand. Each one required someone to find or create the donor record, enter the amount, generate the invoice, send it, and circle back later to reconcile it against the bank deposit. Membership signups from the website generated service requests that staff fulfilled days later. On the communications side, donor and member outreach ran through Pardot, with limited connection back to the system of record, which meant renewal reminders, receipts, and event updates were stitched together manually.
Meanwhile, Georgetown Heritage, the partner organization operating alongside the BID, needed many of the same capabilities, including payment processing, donor management, and communications, but under its own branding and with its own workflows. Running two separate systems was not practical. Running one system that served both was the goal.
District360 worked with Georgetown BID’s CFO and economic development team to build a connected operational platform around the tools the BID already had. The work started with structuring the data, including accounts, contacts, and assessment records, and then layered on payment processing, website integration, and automated communications.
The first priority was getting the data right. District360 structured the environment so that property records, assessment data, donor histories, and membership information all lived in connected, searchable fields rather than unlinked flat records. Assessment data imports gave the economic development team direct access to the financial picture of the district inside the same platform they used for everything else.
Now, when the team sends a request, the donor receives a link that opens a hosted Stripe payment page already tied to their donor record. The donor pays. Stripe confirms the transaction. The record updates with the payment, the date, and the campaign attribution, without anyone on the team touching it. Fifteen donor emails no longer mean fifteen invoices. They mean fifteen links, and one shared workflow underneath all of them.
The same logic was extended to membership through the Georgetown BID website. A new member who signs up online now creates a member record and processes payment in a single step, instead of generating a service request that staff fulfill days later. For Georgetown Heritage, the partner organization that runs alongside the BID, the same Stripe and District360 setup operates under its own branding, which keeps the two operations aligned without forcing them onto one shared process.
Receipts, renewal reminders, and donor newsletters now run through Mailchimp, drawing on the same records that hold the giving history. What the donor receives matches what is true in the system. The marketing team stopped maintaining a parallel view of the donor base, and the development team stopped fielding questions from finance about whether a payment had landed.
District360 built Georgetown Heritage’s environment on the same infrastructure, so the two organizations share a foundation without sharing a process. Heritage operates with its own Stripe flow and its own communication workflows, while the underlying data architecture keeps everything aligned. Six years in, the platform continues to expand alongside both organizations.
Georgetown BID eliminated manual invoicing, automated member enrollment, and connected every team to one platform. Let us show you what that looks like for your district.
Start a conversationWhat changed at Georgetown BID is not one feature. It is the fact that every operational function, from donations and memberships to assessment tracking and communications, now runs through one connected system instead of a collection of workarounds. The development team sends donor requests with embedded payment links. Gifts land in the system automatically. Receipts go out through Mailchimp without anyone composing one. The economic development team pulls assessment data directly from the platform instead of maintaining separate spreadsheets.
Finance no longer chases payment statuses across email threads. Stripe transactions appear in the platform in real time, with clear references back to the donor and the campaign that generated the gift. The development team sees the same view. Membership signups from the website create member records and process payment in a single step, without a service request or manual follow-up. Assessment data imports keep the economic development team’s view of the district current without manual reconciliation. Georgetown Heritage operates on the same foundation with its own branding and workflows.
Pardot is gone. Manual invoicing is gone. The gap between what the team knows and what the platform reflects is gone. Every hour the staff used to spend shepherding data between systems is now spent on the district itself.
Yes. A lot of place management organizations come to District360 with an existing deployment that is partially in use, uncustomized, or set up for one function but not extended to the rest of the work. The approach in those cases is not to rip and replace. It is to audit what is already there, keep what is working, and layer structure, integrations, and workflows on top so the platform actually serves the day-to-day operations of the district. Existing records stay in place throughout.
Georgetown BID is a useful example. The BID already had Salesforce when District360 came in, but it was essentially uncustomized. District360 structured the data model, layered in assessment imports, payment processing, and website integration, and turned a dormant instance into the operational backbone of the organization.
District360 integrates directly with Stripe to run payments as a workflow, not a side task. A donor or member receives a link that opens a hosted Stripe payment page already tied to their record in the platform. They pay, Stripe confirms, and the record updates with the amount, the date, and the campaign attribution, without anyone on the team touching it. The same logic covers one-off gifts, recurring giving, membership signups, and event payments. Stripe charges a published per-transaction fee with no additional platform cost on top.
Receipts, renewal reminders, event invitations, and newsletters are most useful when they reflect what is actually true about a person at the moment the message goes out. District360 connects the communications layer, typically Mailchimp, directly to the records that hold giving history, membership status, and contact information, so outreach draws from live data rather than a parallel list the marketing team has to keep in sync by hand. Segments update as the underlying records change, and renewal timing can be tied to the actual record rather than a spreadsheet reminder.
Most engagements need a small internal group on the district’s side. A finance or development lead confirms how donor and membership records should be structured. A marketing or communications lead joins in if email automation is in scope. Someone with website access gets involved if online enrollment or giving is part of the build. District360 handles the build itself, so place managers do not need a platform admin on staff to carry this work forward.
The data structuring and payment flow is typically the faster part of the engagement. The longer piece tends to be the website integration, which depends on the existing site setup. A typical timeline from kickoff to a live payment flow runs several weeks rather than months, and ongoing refinements continue well past that point as the district’s use of the platform expands.