On this page10 min read
At a glance
- Client
- Fluid Events Inc., the company behind EventMate
- Founder
- Sabrina Roy, CEO and founder
- Industry
- Nonprofit fundraising events
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario
- What we did
- Product and UX design, MVP development, custom web app development, ongoing product support
- Built with
- Supabase, Stripe and Vercel, on our open source MVP Boilerplate
- Timeline
- June 2024 to today. Soft launch September 2024, public launch February 2025
- Engagement
- Fixed-price milestones to launch, then a monthly retainer with dedicated hours
As a founder without a technical background, I was nervous about diving into the tech side, but they were able to simplify everything in a way that was easy for me to understand.
Sabrina Roy CEO and founder, Fluid Events
Background Sabrina Roy spent more than ten years planning events for nonprofits. No platform covered the whole night, so she decided to build her own.
Sabrina founded Fluid Events, an event planning agency in Toronto that works with nonprofit organizations. EventMate is the event-day web app we built with her, for three groups at once.
Organizers
Set up the event page, giving, auctions and sales in one place.
Guests
Find everything for the night on their phones, from one QR code.
The nonprofit's team
Watch donations, bids and sales arrive as they happen.
The challenge Fundraising nights ran on stacks of paper and a patchwork of tools. Building something better took more than code.
Before
- Paper everywhere: printed programs, seating charts and bid sheets
- Too many tools: no single platform covered everything her clients needed
- Giving on the spot: a guest decides in a moment, and payment has to keep up
With EventMate
- One QR code opens the whole night on every phone
- One platform for the event page, giving, auctions and sales
- About 3 seconds from QR scan to a finished donation, on average
This was before today's AI app builders, and Sabrina had no designer, no UX specialist and no product manager. Someone referred her to us, and we became the first agency she worked with, covering all three so she could go to market.
The solution The whole night runs on one custom web app, built MVP first. Guests open it from a QR code. Organizers run it from any device.
A custom web application is software built around one team's real work, opened in any browser with nothing to install. That is what our custom software development services deliver, instead of bending a team to fit someone else's product.
Scoped to launch fast: event pages first, donations next
Sabrina's years in the room told her exactly what other products were missing, so version one was built around that. It was a Linktree for events: one customizable page shared by QR code, with buttons for links and files, a choice of designs and a mobile-first layout for guests in the room. It went to a soft launch in September 2024, less than three months after we started.
A minimum viable product (MVP) is the smallest version real people can use. Donations came next, with a choice of donation goal pages, and opened EventMate to the public in February 2025, while auctions waited on purpose: we onboarded real clients first and built from their needs, not a hypothesis. That is the point of developing an MVP, and of our MVP development for founders.
- Jun 2024Work begins
- Sep 2024Event pages, soft launch
- Feb 2025Donations, public launch
- Jun 2025Merch and product sales
- Jan 2026Silent auctions
- Apr 2026Live auctions
- Jul 2026Complete redesign
A plain English process that kept Sabrina in control
Sabrina is an event expert, not an engineer, so we shaped the MVP product development around her. We designed in short loops, showed her working builds as we went, and left every product decision with her.
Scope the MVP
We defined version one together and priced the work as fixed milestones.
Show, then refine
Weekly demos for six months, then monthly, with staging and development copies to test on.
Add the right people
Design consultants, then more developers as the product grew.
Flex the hours
160-hour months at the busiest, about 10 hours a month now that it is stable.
- Founder time
- 5 to 15 hours a week at the start. Today her head of operations leads, about 30 to 40 hours a month.
- How we talk
- Google Meet for meetings, WhatsApp and email day to day, and Linear as the shared task list.
- Who decides
- Always Sabrina's team. Fluid Events owns the code; we advise.
Founders like Sabrina usually run teams of under 15 people and give the product real time, though not full time. Her head of operations also codes some of the features people see, using an AI coding assistant inside guardrails we set, and we review his code.
Plain English, in practice
One nonprofit wanted donation receipts only for gifts over $15, and the first idea was to write that number into the code just for them. We added a receipt threshold setting instead, so any nonprofit can set its own and the rest leave it blank. One-off rules are how code gets messy; settings keep it healthy.
When a design did not work
Sabrina wanted a zoom-in animation on the public donation goal page that its structure could not support. We flagged it early and tried anyway. When it still fell short, we designed alternatives, demoed them, and she picked one that worked and matched her taste.
Built for planners: one QR code runs the whole night
Everything a guest touches opens from one QR code, and each team tool opens from its own shareable link. There is no app to install, and no paper.
-
Before the doors open
Share one QR code
Organizers brand the event page with their own photo, logo and colours. Then they download a QR code to match.
-
At the door
Check guests in
Staff open the check-in dashboard from a shared link, on any tablet or phone, with nothing to install. Each arrival shows on the guest list the moment it happens.
-
As the room fills
See who is here
Reports show check-ins as they happen. Staff see how many guests have arrived, how many are still to come, and attendance by company.
-
During the night
Give, bid and buy
Guests give from the same QR code with Apple Pay or Google Pay, and donation receipts go out automatically under each nonprofit's own rules. At our suggestion, donors can also cover the card and platform fees, which saves the nonprofit money.
Give.
Bid.
Buy.- Donations, with the total climbing on the big screen
- Silent and live auctions
- Merch and product sales
Give.
Bid.
Buy.
- Donations, with the total climbing on the big screen
- Silent and live auctions
- Merch and product sales
The events dashboard
Check-in on a tablet
Check-in on a phone
Built for growth: proven foundations, so the budget went to features
We built EventMate on our MVP Boilerplate: free, open source starter code with sign-in, payments, email and analytics already wired together. Those foundations worked on day one, so the build time went into EventMate's own features. It is a big part of why the first version reached the market quickly.
devtodollars / mvp-boilerplatePublic
A mobile and/or web boilerplate that covers all your MVP needs.
997
stars on GitHub
| Layer | Tools | What it gives EventMate |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting |  Vercel | Fast event pages, updated automatically with every change |
| Mobile, ready when needed |  Flutter | One codebase for iOS and Android apps, if EventMate goes native |
| Sign-in |  Supabase Auth | Secure sign-in with email verification |
| Backend and database | Supabase, edge functions | Real-time data: bids, totals and check-ins appear the moment they happen, which matters most in a live auction |
| Payments |  Stripe Connect | Donations, product sales and auction payments, paid out to each nonprofit. Card details never touch EventMate's servers. |
| Analytics |  PostHog | Shows how hosts and guests actually use the platform |
 Loops | Receipts and confirmations, plus marketing emails |
EventMate's features do not need heavy computing, so we skipped heavyweight cloud servers and built the backend on edge functions: small pieces of code that run only when needed. That was a CTO-level call Sabrina needed someone to make, and it kept her infrastructure costs low with no need to rebuild later. Choosing Stripe Connect over storing card details for auctions was the same kind of call, safer for her and her clients.
Bespoke software grows with the business. Through ongoing web application development, one event page became donations, sales and two kinds of auctions, all on the same foundation.
The impact $1 million raised in a single night. Live, in the room, while guests give.
EventMate has powered live donations at Nathan Phillips Square, and some of Toronto's biggest nonprofits now fundraise with it. These figures are from October 2026, twenty months after donations went live.
$1M
raised in a single night, EventMate's biggest so far
200+
events hosted since launch
3 sec
average time from QR scan to a finished donation
- 10+
- nonprofits served
- 1,500+
- guests and donors reached
- $1,000
- average donation, $100 median
I had an incredible experience working with the DevToDollars team. They were not only responsive and fully understood the vision but also made the entire process seamless. As a founder without a technical background, I was nervous about diving into the tech side, but they were able to simplify everything in a way that was easy for me to understand.
Sabrina Roy CEO and founder, Fluid Events
Looking ahead A partnership that scales with the product. About 10 hours a month today, more whenever the next feature needs it.
After launch we moved from fixed-price milestones to a monthly retainer with dedicated development hours. When a new feature needed it, we went back to weekly meetings for three months, then returned to monthly. Sabrina's head of operations is our day-to-day partner, and the complete redesign in July 2026 shows the product is still moving.