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The RD Pro Coach

Membership platform for nonprofit development professionals

Raised
$750M+
Experience
20+ years
Credential
CFRE
Visit trpc-platform.vercel.app

Client work · membership platform

Authority site, member dashboard, and coaching hub in one build

Amy Sexton Stanislavski, CFRE, has raised more than $750M over 20+ years in senior nonprofit development. I built The RD Pro Coach as her membership platform. It gives development professionals the templates, tools, and coaching they need to get practical answers instead of theory.

The brief was a full application. A public marketing site, a gated member dashboard with courses and resources, Stripe membership tiers, and an enterprise inquiry path for national nonprofit networks. After an independent technical review, I replaced Webflow and Memberstack with Next.js, Postgres, and custom tier logic.

I owned the build from the stack decisions through Phase 1 scope. Auth, payments, Vimeo-gated video, a Retool admin, and a headless CMS Amy can run without filing a dev ticket. The repo and every service account stay under her ownership from day one.

Role
Full-stack development, architecture, brand implementation
Client
Amy Sexton Stanislavski, CFRE, The RD Pro Coach
Stack
Next.js, Postgres, Stripe, Vimeo, Retool, headless CMS
Timeline
Phase 1 MVP, an 8 to 10 week build

TRPC and AES Consulting are intentionally separate brands. The platform never conflates the two.

01

Two brands, one platform

A marketing site and a member product that both sell credibility

The public site has one job. Move the right visitor to the right conversion action. I anchored the hero on Amy's track record, $750M+ raised, 20+ years, CFRE, before a single feature list. Every page carries one primary CTA. Magenta buttons mark conversion, dark purple handles secondary actions.

The member dashboard is the real product. Onboarding is dismissable after step one, so a new member is never hard-blocked. The resource library, eCourses with Vimeo domain restriction, the webinar archive, office hours, and tier-gated coaching through Calendly all sit behind auth checked against Postgres, not a third-party gate plugin.

  1. 1. Public authority layer

    Homepage, About, Membership, Consulting, Speaking, Webinars, eCourses, Free Resources, Blog, and an enterprise inquiry path. Each one has a single conversion goal.

  2. 2. Gated member dashboard

    Standard and Premium tiers, unified Postgres full-text search, progress tracking per course module, and modular community links ready for a Year 2 Circle or Skool swap.

  3. 3. Enterprise hook

    A nullable organization_id on users from day one. No org logic ships in Phase 1, but the schema avoids a painful migration once white-label accounts arrive.

02

Stack and architecture

Application decisions, not page-builder compromises

The independent technical review replaced Webflow and Memberstack with Next.js on Vercel, NextAuth or Clerk for sessions, and Postgres for tier state, progress, downloads, and search. That cut monthly infrastructure from roughly $120 to $200 down to $50 to $110, and it unlocked tier-based UI, webhooks, and admin analytics Retool can query directly.

Video splits cleanly. Zoom for live webinars, with the pre-registration surveys preserved, and Vimeo Pro with domain restriction for every recorded course and archive. Stripe handles Standard at $297 a year and Premium at $497 a year. Mailchimp fires the onboarding sequences on purchase and on first login.

03

Brand and design system

Amy's palette implemented as code, not an approximation

Primary Purple (#663399) and Dark Purple (#3D1A66) carry the headings, nav, and hero sections. Teal (#4ECDC4) marks accents and dividers. Magenta (#E91E8C) is reserved for the primary CTA, one per section at most. Cormorant Garamond handles display type, DM Sans covers body and UI.

Section backgrounds alternate white and off-white (#FAF8FC). Cards sit on Purple Pale (#F3EAF9). Body copy uses Text Body (#3A2952) for WCAG-safe contrast. The only gradient in the whole system is a 60px magenta to teal accent rule on section dividers.

04

Phase 1 scope and handoff

Launch quality over feature sprawl

I deferred six dashboard features to Phase 2. Certificate PDFs, pause membership, notification preferences, download history, percentage progress bars, and engagement trend lines. Founding members get a clean experience instead of a buggy one.

Handoff was non-negotiable. Amy owns the GitHub repo, the README, the ARCHITECTURE, RUNBOOK, and MAINTENANCE docs from day one. A delete_user function handles PII across every table, not just users. Termly covers cookie consent and policy pages, and an attorney reviews the ToS and Privacy before launch.

Founding members are forgiving if the experience is clean and simple. They are not forgiving if the experience is buggy because too much was attempted at once.

Technical review, Phase 1 scope recommendation
05

What ships next

Phase 2 and enterprise scale

Phase 2 adds the completion certificates, module notes, membership pause, notification preferences, and full engagement analytics in Retool. Community upgrades to Circle or Skool once active membership passes 200.

Phase 3 builds the org portal. Organizations and org_admins tables, white-label branding controls, and SSO hooks for the national nonprofit networks that want to license Amy's content under their own brand.

What did I learn?

  • Membership products are applications. Page builders break the moment you need tier logic, progress, and unified search.
  • Deferring six features protected the launch more than any extra sprint would have.
  • Repo ownership and runbooks are part of the deliverable, not a nice-to-have afterthought.
Development
Laolu James
Client and founder
Amy Sexton Stanislavski, CFRE