Forgotten Coast Freedom Festival Air Show Raises Funds and Simplifies Ticketing with TicketSignup

Customer Snapshot

A small propeller plane sits on a runway or taxiway with thick smoke billowing behind it into a blue sky. A person is standing on top of the plane near the cockpit with arms raised. In the foreground, a yellow runway direction sign reads ‘← 6 | 24 →’.

Years on TicketSignup: 1
Tickets Sold: 2,170
Vendors Registered Through the Ticket Platform: 39

Located on Florida’s scenic panhandle, the Forgotten Coast Freedom Festival Air Show delivers a full day of thrilling flight demonstrations and family-friendly entertainment.

In its inaugural year in 2024, the air show was free and organizers used a Facebook page to post all the details for the event. In 2025, event producers introduced a small admission fee to transform the air show into a fundraising opportunity, generating financial support for the Franklin Educational Foundation – the local school district. With this change, the air show needed a ticketing platform that would make the transition to charging for tickets as smooth as possible for organizers and attendees.

With TicketSignup, this transition was seamless. The air show hosted all important event information on their TicketSignup website. The event sold tickets using TicketSignup’s integrated event registration software, checked in attendees with the Tickets App, communicated with their growing list of attendees through email marketing, and much more.

The best part? The organizers did all of this without having to pay anything – with TicketSignup, all of these features are completely free!

Top 3 Features

Free Website Builder

With TicketSignup’s free website builder, the event director, Steve Kirschenbaum, built a website that included multiple content pages, images, and videos.

By showcasing photos and videos from the previous year, visitors could immediately see the excitement and energy of the air show. This helped set expectations and made the event more enticing for new and returning attendees. The website also served as a central source of truth for event details, reducing confusion and the need for constant social media updates.

Ticketed event website for the Forgotten Coast Freedom Festival Air Show. A top navigation bar shows tabs like Schedule, Air Show 2025 Highlights, Performers, Shirts, Car & Bike Show, and More, with a prominent ‘Buy Tickets’ button on the right. The hero banner features jets flying and displays the event date ‘Sat November 15, 2025’ and location ‘Apalachicola Regional Airport, Apalachicola, FL’ along with social icons. Below, a schedule section lists ‘Gates open 10am’ with bullet items (Car Show, Bike Show, Dancing Witches), and a ‘Take Off 12:50pm’ section with additional bullet points.

The website has multiple pages created under “more,” giving site visitors plenty of helpful info

Donations

Proceeds from ticket sales supported the Franklin Educational Foundation.

In addition to ticket purchases, attendees were able to make optional donations directly through the event website. This made it easy for supporters to contribute more and helped maximize fundraising efforts for local education. 16% of all transactions included a donation, highlighting the impact of an easy-to-use donation feature.

Store

Beyond ticket sales, the event also used TicketSignup’s store feature to sell t-shirts online.

Selling merchandise through the event website created an additional revenue stream and allowed attendees to purchase items ahead of time, simplifying on-site sales.

Ticket purchase page for ‘Forgotten Coast Freedom Festival Air Show’ showing an ‘Airshow T-Shirt’ add-on for $27.50 (includes a $2.50 fee), with size and color dropdowns, quantity controls, and a ‘Continue’ button.

The event website store purchase path view

Creative Uses of TicketSignup Features

The air show organizers used multiple TicketSignup features in creative ways to support attendees, vendors, and volunteers.

They created a private “Kids Ticket (admission with one adult)” option. These tickets were distributed to students in Franklin County schools. Children received free admission as long as a parent or another adult purchased a ticket and attended with them. This helped keep the event accessible for families while still generating revenue.

The event used the ticket purchase path to sell vendor spots. Vendors registered and paid through the same system as ticket buyers, keeping all registrations organized in one place.

They also used a simple ticket purchase path to register volunteers and provide each volunteer with one free ticket to the show. While TicketSignup’s dedicated volunteer feature is not yet available, this approach made volunteer registration and tracking straightforward.

“Admin ticket setup screen for a ticket named ‘Volunteer Registration.’ It shows a purchase period with ‘Purchase Opens’ set to 07/22/2025 12:00 AM and ‘Purchase Ends’ set to 11/15/2025 4:00 PM (America/New_York time). Below is a pricing rule row indicating the ticket costs $0.00 per ticket for a specified cart quantity range, along with a note about pricing transparency laws and a button labeled ‘Add Another Purchase Period..

Volunteer registration setup on the backend

Another creative approach was setting show registration tickets — such as Car Show, Bike Show, and Vendor options — to private. These tickets did not appear on the main “Buy Tickets” page. Instead, organizers created separate website pages for each registration type and linked directly to the private ticket options. This kept the main ticket purchase flow clean and easy for general attendees.

Final Thoughts

The Forgotten Coast Freedom Festival Air Show utilized multiple TicketSignup features to make the process before, during, and after the event easy and straightforward.

By using TicketSignup’s free tools, organizers successfully transitioned from a free event to a ticketed fundraiser while improving organization, communication, and the overall attendee experience.