Two entry tracks
Manual and form entries go straight into the pipeline. Leads found through research enter on a separate track and are held for a four-day review before any outreach, so a person signs off before anything is sent.
📷CRM automation
Mallory Portraits: four tools replaced by one donations pipeline
We built Mallory Portraits a full GoHighLevel donations pipeline that pulled a fragmented stack into a single CRM funnel, with clear ownership, four package types, and automated email and SMS outreach, then trained the team to run it themselves.
Mallory Portraits is a photography business that runs a community donations program, giving portrait packages to people connected with local fundraising causes. The program had outgrown the tools holding it together. We replaced a legacy CRM, a separate task tool, and a scatter of disconnected subscriptions with one GoHighLevel pipeline that runs the whole journey from first contact to delivered package. Today the program lives in a single funnel with named owners at every stage, automated outreach over email and SMS, and a documented handover, so nothing falls through the cracks and the team can operate it without us.
🎯The problem
A good program running on a stack that fought against it
The donations program worked, but the tooling around it had grown one patch at a time. A legacy CRM held some of the contacts. A separate task tool held the follow-ups. A handful of other subscriptions did one job each and talked to none of the others. There was no single funnel that showed where any given recipient stood, which meant the same questions kept getting asked out loud: who is handling this one, what was the last thing we sent, has it actually shipped.
Because ownership was unclear, work either got done twice or not at all. Outreach went out by hand, so it went out late or not in a consistent voice. And because the recipient details lived in different places, the team spent its time reconciling tools instead of running the program. The brief was simple to state and harder to deliver: one place to run the whole thing, with clear handoffs, and a system the team could own after we left.
🧭The approach
One CRM, one funnel, owners at every stage
We consolidated everything into GoHighLevel and designed the pipeline around how the program actually runs, with two entry tracks, deterministic stage movement, and a manual override the team can pull at any time. The CRM handles the repetitive outreach, people keep the judgment.
A seven-stage pipeline
A clear seven-stage path, plus a Closed-Lost stage, with a named owner and handoff at each step. Anyone can open the funnel and see exactly where a recipient stands and who is responsible for the next move.
Automated, controllable outreach
Email and SMS go out on workflows the team configured, with per-package confirmation emails and a manual "Pause Automations" tag that stops the sequences on any contact when a human wants to take over.
⚙️What we built
A complete donations pipeline in GoHighLevel
The core of the build is a seven-stage GoHighLevel pipeline, plus a Closed-Lost stage, that carries every recipient from first contact through to a delivered package. Two entry tracks feed it. Manual entries and the website form drop contacts straight in. Leads sourced through research land on a held track and wait four days for human review before they move, so outreach only ever goes to recipients a person has approved. Every stage has a defined owner and a clean handoff, so the question of who is doing what is answered by the funnel itself rather than by a chat thread.
On top of the pipeline we built the working parts the program needs day to day. Four package types are modeled in the CRM so the right confirmation goes with the right gift. Automated email and SMS workflows handle outreach, with an address-collection branch that gathers shipping details at the right moment and per-package confirmation emails that fire automatically once a package is set. A post-event winner inquiry follows up after a fundraising event. The team's own email templates were loaded in so the voice stays theirs, and more than eighteen custom fields capture everything the program tracks per contact. A dedicated donations inbox keeps all the program's conversations in one place.
The program also takes entries from the website. A register-to-win form on the Mallory Portraits site is bridged into GoHighLevel through Make.com, so online sign-ups become CRM contacts without anyone retyping them. And because automation should never trap an operator, a "Pause Automations" override tag lets the team stop every sequence on a contact and handle it by hand whenever a situation needs a human. The whole system was documented and the team was trained for handover, so they own it.
🧱The stack
Built with
- GoHighLevel the system of record, running the CRM, forms, email, SMS, workflows, and API
- Make.com bridges the website register-to-win form into GoHighLevel as new contacts
- Google Workspace for the team's day-to-day collaboration and the donations inbox
- Google Sheets as a working reference alongside the CRM
📈The outcome
Four disconnected tools became one CRM funnel with clear ownership and automated outreach. The donations program now runs in a single place, recipients move through defined stages with a named owner at each step, and the email and SMS that used to go out by hand go out on their own. Nothing falls through the cracks, and the team runs it themselves.
- One funnel, not four tools a legacy CRM, a task tool, and scattered subscriptions consolidated into GoHighLevel
- Clear ownership a seven-stage pipeline with a named owner and handoff at every stage
- Outreach on autopilot automated email and SMS, an address-collection branch, and per-package confirmations
- The team owns it documented, trained for handover, with a manual pause tag for full human control
Part of a 5.0-rated track record on Upwork, across recruitment, FinOps, and data-pipeline automation builds for B2B teams.
See the track record on Upwork
🔗Services used
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