Likelihood to Recommend Specific scenarios where Blackbaud DonorCentral is well suited are definitely in regards to our Development team. They can quickly update our constituent's memberships and keep our communications team in the loop on current member emails and those who are in need or renewals. It also helps with their development and fundraising events. They are keeping track of the highest donors and those big prospective donors for future events. Scenarios, where it is less appropriate, are definitely in my meetings department. It does not sync with our registration database for conferences, so we have to do double work verifying if they are members or not.
Read full review As we are a small Foundation with only one Administrative Assistant, eTapestry is perfect for me to keep all of our CRM. Once I got used to how it worked, I found it to be user friendly. If I have any problems, I can either try to find the answer for myself in the extensive library, chat to support or email our Customer Service Representative with questions. I cannot fault either the Support team or Customer Service Representatives I have dealt with over the years as all of them have been knowledgeable and extremely helpful. I would prefer to have better options within the Email section as the templates are very basic. There is another option to use an eTapestry partner, but there are additional costs involved in that. The email templates are OK to use if you wish to send quick information to your database.
Read full review Pros Has great security and privacy settings. Keeps your donor information safe. Has a direct link with donors to our information. Eliminates a lot of double work and or hitting the same donor with multiple emails. Read full review Report Scheduling is great. Reports can be scheduled daily (even on specific days of the week), weekly, or monthly) and auto-emailed. Reports can be displayed on the screen, downloaded, or emailed in CSV, excel, or pdf and can have columns pre-sorted in your preferred order. Online donations are automatically added to the donor's account and automatically create an account for a new donor. Read full review Cons Doesn't interface with our Aventri Registration system. Has quite a few advertised features like SKY and DAF that don't get used that much and aren't as impressive as they say that are. Read full review When I started using eTapestry, you had to pay for courses to learn how to do more complicated things in the database. These courses were fairly expensive and our small organization couldn't afford that. I had to figure a lot out on my own or using the tech folks in chat or the odd free thing. Not sure if the courses are still costly or not. It is not particularly user friendly--for example, you would think the drag and drop email template would be pretty straightforward but it is not! And there aren't built in instructions to help as you try to use things. Figuring out how to organize queries and reports and communications in folders in order to find things again has been challenging. It is possible to search on keywords, which is very helpful. But finding something in a list of queries that is not alphabetical isn't particularly easy. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We do not always get positive solutions from Etapestry. There are a lot of resources and solutions that you can read about and reach out to. I participate in Community Forums and trainings to see what we can be doing differently.
Read full review Usability eTapestry was the first donor database I had ever used and always found it to be much easier to use and administer than the databases I was used to (patient care and payroll databases). The rare times I can't figure out how to do something, I just hope on the chat and someone from the team pleasantly walks me through the process. If it's something that database is incapable of doing, they encourage me to log my suggestion in the idea bank so it can be considered for enhancements. On top of that, the regular training provided allows you to continue building your skills within the database
Read full review Reliability and Availability I have never had an issue accessing eTapestry. It does occasionally go down for maintenance. When that happens, they give you a lot of notice and generally schedule maintenance for hours between midnight and 6am so that business won't be disrupted.
Read full review Performance The product does what it is supposed to, although there are downsides. There are positive and negatives for every product. This is less expensive alternative for a small organization tracking minimum information.
Read full review Support Rating I gave it a low rating because response times are slow. It does have multiple ways to reach support, but it usually takes a while before you "get in front" of the person you need to fix your issue. Also, problems seem to happen a lot, so it makes the process more frustrating.
Read full review My favorite feature is the Live Chat. If we get stuck, we can get immediate help, download the chat and save it for later so if we need help again we have it on file. The Knowledge Database is also extremely helpful.
Read full review In-Person Training In person training is always helpful for a new product however I think that the online tutorials would do just fine.
Read full review Online Training The online tutorials were easy to follow and explained in detail steps. I was able to put together an organization SOP for best practices in case I was not in the office or no longer there.
Read full review Implementation Rating I was not there for the implementation of this platform. Unfortunately I am unable to just skip this question as it requires a response, which needs to be fifty characters, so here we are. At thirty four, I need to add a few more words to satisfy this requirement. Done.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I do not know of any other alternatives, as I do not work in the development department. Our Development team would have sourced alternatives to settle on this one.
Read full review We have researched 2-3 other donor platforms and we just aren't at a place to change, although we are very tempted. eTapestry is getting us by for now and we don't look forward to the day when we have to change platforms and have to change things for our monthly donors. We worry about attrition if our donors have to change platforms.
Read full review Scalability The product allows us flexibility and scalability for our team.
Brittany Beltz Assistant Director of Annual Giving and Stewardship Manager
Read full review Return on Investment Helps development team keep a clear and concise donor relationship. Accounting can forecast money coming in more accurately. Read full review Increased our capacity to fundraise. Allowed more opportunity to know our donors (tracking and data collection). Limited users - due to steep learning curve - as such less of our development staff know how to use the system to its fullest potential. Read full review ScreenShots Blackbaud eTapestry Screenshots