Nonprofit Event Photo Sharing With Attendees: A Gala Workflow

Each gallery has its own link, its own password and its own switches. That is what keeps the three audiences apart.

A free account holds one gallery, so the three-gallery setup needs the paid plan. A volunteer on a free account can still deliver the attendee gallery on its own; the plan section below has the figures.

The organisation invited the guests, so the organisation sets the rules for their photos.

Ask for three things in writing before the event.

1. The photo-release wording guests agreed to at registration, if any.
2. How guests who declined photos will be identified on the night, and who keeps that list.
3. A yes or no on face search for the attendee gallery.

If the answer to any of these is unclear, choose the cautious setting and ask again.

This page describes how the product behaves. It is not legal advice, and it cannot tell an organisation what its own obligations are.

1. Create the gallery under your studio name. It lives on your own subdomain, with your logo and no platform branding on the page.
2. Upload only frames the organisation cleared for attendees. The web uploader takes JPG and PNG files and resizes them in the browser. Lightroom Classic users can publish from the catalog with the plugin instead.
3. Build sections that follow the programme. The next section covers how they look to guests.
4. Switch picks off. Everyone with the link shares one set of picks, so picks do nothing useful for a room of donors.
5. Set a password. It goes in the same email as the link.
6. Set face search and downloads the way the organisation asked. Both are switches on the gallery.
7. Write the welcome note. It appears under the gallery title. Put the organisation's photo policy there, and the name of the person who handles removal requests.
8. Hand the organisation one link. Guests need no account and install nothing. If the organisation wants a QR code on a thank-you card or a closing slide, make one from the gallery link with any QR generator, as the QR code event gallery guide explains.
9. Add late frames to the same gallery. The link does not change and new photos are added at the end. Guests are not notified, so the organisation tells them.

A gala has a running order: arrivals, reception, speeches, the auction, dinner, dancing. Sections let the gallery follow it.

Guests see one scrolling page. Photos not placed in a section come first under “Highlights”, then each section follows under its own heading.

A jump bar at the top shows each section with its photo count, so a guest can go straight to the auction.

Sections go one level deep. They also count toward the gallery's 1,000-photo ceiling, so a very large event splits into a second gallery rather than more sections.

Each section also has its own share link. That link shows only that section, and it is view-only: no downloads, no picks, no comments and no face search. The gallery password still applies to it.

A section link suits a board member or a partner who only needs to look at the speeches.

At a gala, face search lets a donor find their own photos with a selfie instead of scrolling the whole evening.

On clientgallery.io it is off by default and switched on per gallery.

When it is on, the matching runs entirely in the guest's own browser. The selfie is never uploaded.

The face index for the gallery sits behind the gallery password. Face search does not work on section links.

The page shows guests a short explanation before they choose a selfie. There is no consent step beyond that, which is why the decision to switch it on belongs to the organisation.

The full event workflow, including where matching fails, is in the guide to delivering event photos so attendees find themselves. The privacy questions a donor might ask are answered in the face recognition privacy answer.

Some donors will not want their evening photos to turn up in a web search. Two settings work together here.

A password sent to a whole guest list keeps strangers out. It does not stop a guest from forwarding the link and the password.

There are no per-viewer logins, so nobody can see which donor opened the gallery. The studio sees only whether the gallery has been opened at all.

If a link ends up somewhere it should not, revoking the gallery takes the page dark. The mechanics of the password are in the password guide.

Some organisations want attendees to view the photos but not download them. The downloads switch helps, but say plainly what it covers.

With downloads off, the gallery hides the “Download all photos” button and the download button on each photo, and the ZIP request is refused.

It does not hide a live full-resolution ZIP, social crops after picks are sent, or an attached invoice.

Above all, it does not stop anyone from saving a photo that is on screen. The images load from ordinary image addresses, and right-click is not blocked.

The gallery also adds no watermark. If the organisation wants one, apply it before upload, for example with Lightroom Classic's own watermark panel at export.

So treat downloads-off as a signal of intent, not a lock. A photo that must not be saved should not be in the attendee gallery.

Sponsor logos on the step-and-repeat, the cheque presentation and the table hosts belong in the comms gallery. That gallery gets its own password, shared only with the comms team.

There are no seats or staff logins. The comms team works from the gallery link, and a studio with two photographers shares one account.

Leave picks on here. One person on the team marks the frames for the newsletter and the annual report, then presses Send my picks with a name and email.

Sending locks the selection. You get an email with the counts, you can export the picked filenames as a plain list, and you can reopen picking if the team changes its mind.

Once picks are sent, the team can make centre crops of picked photos in Story 9:16, Post 4:5, Square 1:1 and Wide 16:9 for social posts.

For print-ready sponsor files, attach a full-resolution ZIP to the comms gallery. It holds the files you put in it, and the team sees its size and a countdown of days left.

Keep this ZIP off the attendee gallery. Anyone with that link and password would see its button, even with downloads switched off.

Some guests will be photographed before anyone knows they declined, or will appear in a group shot the organisation still wants for internal records.

If the organisation has no use for those frames, the simplest choice is not to upload them.

If it does, put them in their own gallery. Do not put them in a section of the attendee gallery. Sections have no passwords of their own, and every section appears on the main page for anyone with the attendee link.

Set up the restricted gallery like this.

• A password that goes to one named contact at the organisation.
• Face search off.
• Downloads off, remembering the limits above.
• The Share button off, so the page offers no share sheet.
• A welcome note that says what the gallery is for and who may open it.

Agree in advance how a removal request reaches you and how fast you act on it. If a gallery must come down before you can sort it out, revoke it.

A single gala can run on a free account. An organisation with events all year, or a photographer who wants the three-gallery setup, needs the paid plan.

Hosted photos are proof JPEGs of about 0.6 MB each, sized for fast viewing. A full 1,000-photo gallery is therefore roughly 0.6 GB, well inside the free 5 GB.

The service hosts JPEGs only. It does not keep RAW files, so the masters stay on your own drives.

If the photos should reach attendees while the gala is still running, the batch workflow is in the same-day event photo delivery guide.

clientgallery.io has no guest accounts, no staff seats and no recorded consent for face search. An organisation that needs any of those should use a tool that provides them.

It also has no print store and takes no commission. A fundraiser that sells prints of the evening to raise money should use a platform with a store built in, such as Pixieset or Pic-Time.

Where it fits is the photographer who needs to hand one evening to three audiences, under the photographer's own name, at a flat price.

This page states no external figure, quotes no competitor and gives no statistic about nonprofits or their events. Pixieset and Pic-Time are named only as examples of platforms with a built-in print store. Every clientgallery.io behaviour below was checked against the product on 17 September 2026.

• clientgallery.io product behaviour (plan prices; free account of one gallery and 5 GB; fair-use ceilings of 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB per paid account; proofs of about 0.6 MB; the 3-day full-resolution ZIP with 100 GB standing; no gallery expiry; the password length, its 30-day memory and what it gates; noindex gallery pages; face search off by default with matching in the guest's browser; section links being view-only; what the downloads switch hides and does not hide; shared picks, the picks list and social crops; no seats, no guest accounts and no watermark), checked 17 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io/