Case study · Website, payments & automation
The Sound Garden
Registration, tiered dues and camp logistics for a 140-person Burning Man theme camp, run from one site. I'm one of the people who runs the camp, so I built the system we needed and then lived with it for a season.
Role
Design, build, operations
Client
My own camp · Black Rock City
Stack
Next.js, Stripe, Google Forms & Sheets, Zapier
Status
Live · year two
The problem
A camp of 140 people has to collect dues at several price tiers, know who's bringing what power draw, and keep a roster everyone trusts. That used to live across group chats, a spreadsheet and hand-tracked payments.
What I did
Designed and built the site, a registration flow with per-person dues and power tiers, Stripe checkout, and the automations that move each sign-up from form to sheet to confirmation without a person in the loop.
What came of it
140 campers registered and six figures in dues collected through the site in one season, with the organizers working from a single roster that filled itself in.
The context
A camp is a small business that exists for one week.
The Sound Garden is a theme camp in Black Rock City: a sound system people cross the playa for, shade, power, communal dinners, and a crew that builds it all by hand and packs it out clean. It's run by volunteers, and I'm one of them.
Behind the warm part is an unglamorous one. Every year the camp has to sell its spots, price them fairly for a tent versus a 50-amp RV, collect the money before the build needs it, and know exactly who is coming and what they're plugging in. For years that ran on messages, a shared spreadsheet, and someone checking Venmo.
Pricing
Two parts, priced honestly.
Flat dues punish the person in a tent and undercharge the big rig. So dues have two parts: a camp fee everyone pays, and power priced by the hookup you actually use. RV hookups are billed per vehicle and split among its occupants. No personal generators.
Everyone
Camp fee
Per person, paid in full at checkout. Covers your spot, shade, sound and camp amenities for the week.
Power · add-on
Tent · 15 amp
Extension-cord draw. Lights, a fan, a charger.
Power · add-on
Small RV · 30 amp
Campervans and small rigs. Billed per RV, split by occupants.
Power · add-on
Large RV · 50 amp
Big rigs with air conditioning.
The dues page. Between seasons it holds last year's structure so people know what to expect, and the sign-up becomes a waitlist.
The system
One sign-up, and everything downstream fills itself in.
The site is the front door, but the useful part is what happens after someone clicks. I didn't want a custom back office to maintain from the desert. Each step is a tool the organizers already know, wired together so nobody has to copy anything by hand.
The sign-up
1 · Camper
Registers
Name, contact, arrival, tent or RV, power tier, who they're sharing with.
2 · Google Sheet
Roster row
Every response lands as a row. The roster is the single source of truth all season.
3 · Stripe
Checkout
Camp fee plus the right power tier, paid in full. No invoices to chase.
4 · Zapier
Marks it paid
The payment flips the row, so the roster and the money never disagree.
What the automations do next
To the camper
Confirmation
Receipt, what's included, arrival instructions and the camp WhatsApp, sent automatically.
To the organizers
Live totals
Headcount, dues collected, and power load by tier, straight from the sheet.
To the build
The placement plan
Who needs a 30-amp or 50-amp hookup, so the power layout is known before anyone drives in.
Nothing here is bespoke software. It's a form, a sheet, a payment page and a few rules, which is exactly why volunteers can run it without me.
The site
Warm at the front, practical underneath.
The camp is a dark, glowing place at night, and the site borrows that: deep navy, warm serif headings, a soft mint for the actions. The copy reads like the camp talks. Under it, the pages people actually need are all there: what it costs, what's included and what isn't, how to arrive, how to perform, and how to reach camp HQ from the road.
Performers apply through the site too, which turned a flood of DMs into a list.
The outcome
The money came in before the build did.
140
campers registered through the site
6 figures
in dues collected via Stripe, in one season
1
roster, filled in by the sign-ups themselves
The organizers spent the run-up planning the camp instead of reconciling payments. Dues were in hand when the build needed them, the power plan was known before the first vehicle arrived, and the same system is now collecting names for next year.
Reflection
What I took away.
01
The system that gets maintained is the one built from tools people already use. A form and a sheet beat a custom admin panel when the admins are volunteers.
02
Price structure is a design problem. Splitting the camp fee from power made dues feel fair, and fairness is what gets 140 people to pay early.
03
Running the thing you built is the best review you'll ever get. Every rough edge found me within a week.
04
A site for a community has to sound like the community. The warm copy isn't decoration; it's why people trust the checkout.