About Ticket Turtle

Ticket Turtle is the brainchild of Ness Blackbird, a harmless eccentric and the founder of Willow Mountain Consulting, inc., a small company specializing in affordable custom computer programming services for nonprofits.

Ticket Turtle began in 2003 as a custom project for the Northwest Children's Theatre. We had already helped them with their membership database. Later, they investigated online ticketing systems, and found that everything available was either overpriced or insufficient. We contracted with them to design a custom online system which would look like their existing website, and which would use their discount structure, including packages, student discount, group discounts, and so forth. Over the next few years, the system was refined and began to attract some interest. Several other theatres discussed having us do a custom system -- but money was a problem. Custom systems are expensive.

A lot of theatres were interested, though. Enough that after some soul searching, Ness decided to write Ticket Turtle with help from his longtime friend Poney Carpenter. The idea was to create something which nonprofit theatres would appreciate, and which they would find affordable. No online system had ever been designed specifically for smaller nonprofit theatres: we felt it would fill an important need.

Patrick Spike, former Director of Information Technology & Resources at Portland Center Stage, was immensely supportive and helpful. He was kind enough to spend hours with us hashing out the system design, bringing his extensive knowledge of box office management and various ticketing systems.  With his professional computer expertise, he was the perfect person to help mold the system. Click here to read his thoughts about our project. (Update! Spike has left Portland Center Stage to work for Ticket Turtle as Director of Customer Relations. It's a dream come true!)  Spike is also working to launch Spiral Stage Theatre Group in the Portland area.  They were already a customer of Ticket Turtle before Spike joined our team.

For more information about Ticket Turtle, please call or email sales manager Heather Blackbird at (866) 788-7853 extension *140 or email heather@ticketturtle.com.  Expect courteous, informative communications from us, no hard sells here.