A great many non-profits are also landlords. The historical society owns the house, the arts association owns the hall, the preservation group owns the chapel and the old school next to it. Renting those spaces out for weddings, meetings, classes and parties helps pay for the roof, the boiler and the paint. It is also, usually, run on a PDF packet, an email thread and a paper calendar on the office wall.
We built venue rentals for those organizations. It is optional: switch it on in Settings, under Features. It is off until you do, and it costs nothing extra. Rentals is part of the same 3% as every other feature.
Every screenshot here is from a Clerestory demo organization with test data.
Buildings and rooms
Start by adding your buildings and the rooms in each one, with photos and a capacity. Every room has its own rates, and you can set them the way your board already thinks about them:
- Public, member and non-profit rates, so members and other community groups can pay less.
- Weekday or weekend rates.
- Per hour, half day, full day or a flat fee.
Add extras renters can choose, such as a projector or extra tables, and the setup and cleanup time your volunteers need around each booking. Set opening hours for each building, and requests outside them are turned away.
Combined rooms, never double-booked
Plenty of halls are really two rooms with a folding wall. In Clerestory you can set up Hall A, Hall B and the Whole Hall as one combined room. Clerestory never lets two renters hold the same space at once. That includes setup and cleanup time, and it includes the combined room: if Hall A is booked, the Whole Hall is not available at the same time.
A page renters book from
Your rooms get a public page with a month of availability, which you can link to or embed on your own website. A renter picks a room and sends a request for one date or a weekly series, with their guest count, the extras they want and answers to any questions you add to the request.
Requests, or instant booking
Requests land in a queue, where staff approve or decline each one. If a room is simple enough that every request in your hours is a yes, switch on Instant Booking for that room and requests skip the review.
Agreement, insurance and payment, from one link
Once a booking is approved, the renter gets a booking link by email. From it, they:
- confirm a code sent to their email address,
- sign your rental agreement online,
- upload a certificate of insurance, if you ask for one, and
- pay by card.
Staff accept or reject each insurance certificate. If a renter pays by cash, check or bank transfer instead, staff mark the payment as paid.
Deposits
Every room can take a security deposit in one of two ways. You can take a refundable deposit up front, or you can keep the renter's card on file with Stripe, our payment processor, so any damage can be charged afterwards. Clerestory never holds card numbers.
After the event, you choose what happens: return the deposit, keep part of it with a reason, or charge for damage.
Weekly renters and payment schedules
The choir that rehearses every Tuesday, or the yoga class that meets every Saturday morning, sends one request for the whole weekly series. You choose for each room whether a series is billed up front or date by date. For larger bookings, set a payment schedule, and Clerestory sends the renter a reminder before each charge.
The calendar
Staff see a week view for each building and a month view for each room. The Today schedule shows whoever is opening up what is booked, where and when. When you need a space yourself, block the time.
Each building, its own books
If your buildings belong to different legal entities, say a house owned by the society and a hall owned by its foundation, each building can sit under its own entity, with its own Stripe account and its own QuickBooks class.
Reports, kept apart from giving
Rental reports show income by building, room and month, how full each space is, and the deposits you are holding. Rental income is its own category. It never counts toward giving totals and never appears on a tax receipt, so your donor reports stay clean.
What it does not do
A few things rentals does not do today, so you know before you start:
- Bookings do not sync to Google Calendar or Outlook.
- Renters pay by card or you mark an offline payment as paid. Clerestory does not send invoices with net-30 terms.
- Renters are not offered the option to cover the fees.
- Your own events and classes are not linked to rooms. Block the time on the rental calendar when you need a space.
- Renters manage their booking from the booking link. There is no separate renter account.
Getting started
If you already use Clerestory, switch on Rentals in Settings and add your first building. If you are new to Clerestory and rent out your space, book a 20-minute walkthrough. Bring your room list, your rates and your rental agreement, and we will show you your own building set up in Clerestory. You can also read more on the venue rentals page or see how Clerestory fits venues and event spaces.
