Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony (HYS) is the only statewide youth orchestra program in Hawaiʻi. This comprehensive, community-driven resource serves 800+ students in nearly 150 schools across the islands each year.
HYS offers a full range of ensembles and programs to fit any level of musical education: from beginning strings, ukulele, and general music to advanced jazz ensembles, full symphonies, and immersive summer intensives like the Pacific Music Institute. HYS fosters fun experiences that build musical skill, collaboration, community, and a deep respect for the cultural heritage of the islands.
As HYS sought to give more students access to music education, the organization needed to automate complex registrations, payments, and communications across dozens of programs and hundreds of families.
Jotform Enterprise gave the HYS team a holistic platform to
- Collect complex student registrations
- Create approvals and workflows powered by conditional logic
- Gather audition video submissions and store video assets
- Centralize program information for stakeholders through an app
- Track expenses
To fully automate operations, the organization synced Jotform Enterprise with Stripe to easily reconcile tuition, merchandise, sponsorships, and rental payments.
No longer dependent upon paper, manual tasks, and disconnected platforms, HYS was able to eliminate bottlenecks and simplify the experience for families and the organization alike.
Together, Jotform and Stripe help HYS fulfill its core vision: “creating a Hawaiʻi where music is a right.”
Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony case study results at a glance
800+ students covering 150+ schools and 6 islands
Jotform Enterprise & Stripe helped HYS scale its programs to serve more children across Hawaiʻi.
$1,000,000+
Since 2024, HYS has automated over $1 million in digital payments through Jotform Enterprise & Stripe, eliminating manual follow-up and erroneous data.
86% reduction in busywork
HYS enjoyed an almost 90% reduction in administrative work (registering students) by using the automation flows of Jotform & Stripe.
A growing music organization juggling complex registrations and scattered workflows
Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony (HYS) serves hundreds of students across multiple novice to advanced musical programs. By definition, its vision of making music a right for every student in Hawaiʻi meant the team was constantly scaling programs, adding new initiatives, and supporting students from multiple islands.
Hannah Watanabe, the programs director for HYS, knew first hand that rapid growth also meant dealing with fragmented paper-based (and legacy) workflows.
Prior to using Jotform Enterprise, HYS families needed to complete several paper forms, deliver paper checks in person, and navigate several disconnected processes that covered medical releases, contracts, instrument rentals, and payments.
“For a long time, parents would fill out these paper registration forms, then have to come in to deliver them, then pay by check or cash,” notes Watanabe.
Any busy parent knows there’s precious little time to fill out multiple forms, not to mention taking the time to deliver in-person payments.
Multiply that by hundreds of kids, and you’ve got a big administrative problem for a nonprofit with a small staff to solve.
The HYS team did its best to handle this by using the organization’s existing CRM for student registrations and by manually cross-checking payment statuses, but this resulted in forms that were difficult to customize and prone to user error. Additionally, staff spent hours tracking down missing documents and re-entering handwritten information.
Watanabe recalls the frustration:
“Parents would fill out the initial registration, then we would send them additional forms before we could even get started. They’d need to fill out subsequent information, and it became lots of having to chase after parents after every form or component.”
Growing HYS’s reach among the islands’ students also meant dealing with different reimbursement processes that equated to additional (and manual) administrative and financial work.
Last but not least, the number of programs the team coordinated had grown considerably over the years. They realized how vital having a central location for HYS schedules, registration guidelines, and instructions was for post-registration engagement.
It’s really streamlined registration, not just for data collection but for our parents. Now, they can just do this one registration and they’re done.
Hannah Watanabe, Programs Director, Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony
Finding a way to unify registrations, payments, workflows, and communication
Once Watanabe took on student registrations, the president of HYS urged her to look into Jotform as a workflow solution.
The more she dug into the platform, the more tasks she realized Jotform Enterprise (and its integrations) could handle. Soon HYS began relying on Jotform as the core system for program management, using it across nearly every part of the organization’s operation, especially on nuanced registration tasks.
“Having parents be able to send in a lot of video submissions through Jotform has made it easy for us to collect videos and ensure that parents don’t have to worry,” says Watanabe. “It’s easy for them to film something on their phone and then upload it to Jotform…. All the videos are housed there, it’s easy for us to see who’s turned it in, and it’s a nice one-stop shop.”
Watanabe discovered that she could use Jotform to consolidate processes and multiple forms. As an example, she combined registration, health history, e-signature consent, instrument rental, and payments into one form using Jotform’s conditional logic.
She also solved the centralized information gap for parents, students, and faculty by using Jotform Apps for the organization’s Pacific Music Institute summer program. Program stakeholders can now instantly access schedules, instructions, documentation needs, and maps via a QR code displayed at the summer camp. It’s an elegant solution Watanabe leveraged to save even more busywork.
“It cuts out a lot of having to ask staff and faculty questions about things. They knew they could go to the app, or our volunteers could just say, ‘Here’s the QR code; download the app, and your answers will be there.’ ”
On the back end, the HYS team began using Jotform Workflows to handle both internal and external administrative needs, such as automated routing for financial aid requests, neighbor-island reimbursement forms, internal expense tracking and approvals, and multistep registration actions.
”We’re at the point that parents only have to fill everything out once. This amazing workflow starts as part of [the kids’] registration,” says Rachel Schultz, COO of Hawaiʻi Youth Symphony. “Then all the details get churned out to different folders so the appropriate stakeholders can access the information and approvals. It’s pretty cool.”
Making nonprofit payments, tracking, and reconciliation easy with Stripe
There are a number of different payment collection outcomes after a student registers with HYS. As a result, the organization needed a payment solution provider that would sync easily with Jotform Enterprise and be flexible enough to support its needs.
Staff identified Stripe for easy reconciliation, invoicing, and tracking. Stripe has enabled the symphony to collect funds for program tuition, merchandise, instrument rentals, orchestral invoices, and more.
In addition to collecting payments, Schultz believes Stripe has helped her team be more efficient in nuanced ways.
“Our families often register with multiple email addresses, and they may change credit cards halfway through the school year. This was causing an issue with our old system. But in Stripe, it’s really easy to reconcile the accounts and cards. Sponsors recently purchased tables for our gala through Stripe, and sending invoices through Stripe is just as easy.”
One platform that saves time and supports organizational growth
By using Jotform Enterprise and its Stripe integration, HYS traded complicated, manual, multistep processes for a seamless system that works for families and staff across the islands of Hawaiʻi.
HYS improved the customer experience and staff efficiency by moving from multiple registration forms to one unified student registration experience powered by conditional logic. This single change eliminated weeks of back-and-forth emails and dramatically reduced parent confusion.
“It’s really streamlined registration, not just for data collection but for our parents. Now, they can just do this one registration and they’re done,” Watanabe explains. “They’ve done all the paperwork.”
On the admin side, HYS staff has saved significant time by collecting over $1 million in digital payments as part of their workflows since 2024. The result is fewer follow-ups and manual invoices, as well as more accurate data. Stripe gives HYS staff clear visibility into batches, outstanding balances, invoices, and credit card changes, without the issues the symphony faced in the past.
“Using Stripe definitely saves administration time, which is really important when you’re a nonprofit [that doesn’t have] a large staff. And the payment data is easy to track, reconcile, and forward between departments and our external agencies. Finally, it’s easy on our parents to use, so we’re not fielding complaints. It’s made it easier for us to focus on the big picture, which is helping kids make music,” says Schultz.
With Jotform Enterprise, HYS created better experiences for parents, students, and volunteers. The organization simplified the audition video process and built a mobile-friendly app that provides easy access to program information. Simultaneously, the organization improved operations for internal staff by creating workflows that route documents to the right faculty, financial aid staff, and relevant admins.
With the Jotform and Stripe integration, HYS has built a fully online, mobile-friendly experience that works for families and staff alike. And as HYS continues to add programs and software, the integration can scale alongside the organization.
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