TrustRadius
https://media.trustradius.com/product-logos/8f/ww/NEUGKOMW0LEU.pngeTapesty for all your nonprofit needs in fund development.We use Blackbaud's eTapestry on a daily basis to track and record information about our constituency. The eTapestry program is ideal for a small organization such as ours. It allows for queries and reports needed in order to conduct business. Without eTapestry, we would be lost.,Daily, we are entering data about our partners in mission. We use that data to create queries and to run reports. eTapestry has made our work easier. Our processes are now streamlined with eTapestry. We know what we need daily, weekly, monthly, etc. and eTapestry gets the work done for us. Deposits and credit card transactions are easily managed by eTapestry.,We conduct a lot of donor visits. It would be nice to have a mapping option to layout donors in a certain area and map out the visits, rather than us using Google.,9,eTapestry has allowed us to diversify the ways we organize and reach out to our donors. eTapestry has added in the planned giving component, so now we have to opportunity to walk our donors through the planned giving stages and track our means of communication. In the last year, eTapestry took the journal entries and separated out the mass contacts (such as mass mailers, thank you batches, etc...). This has helped us manage our partners in mission more easily and to see the big picture of the donors giving history.,The Raisers Edge, DonorPerfect and 1CRM,Microsoft 365 Business, Google Analytics, Influitive AdvocateHub,4,1,Entering Data Storing Data Creating Queries Running Reports Instant Spapshot of your fundraising history,Utilizing the calendar events to schedule special occasion cards. Using the planned giving element for moves management Acquiring new donors and reengaging lapsed donors,Advanced features would be nice for GIS mapping of active donor base Expanding the fund development department for email and marketing campaigns, such as Easter,8,Yes,Product Features Product Usability Prior Experience with the Product Analyst Reports,No.eTaspestry, Weaving a tracking system that works!We are using eTapestry in our Development Department to track donors and prospective donors. It addresses the problem of tracking donations and being able to report on them in various ways.,The constant contact interface makes it easy to send out e-newsletters and track who actually opens the emails. Makes reporting easy. It is good to be able to define the fields that are specific for your own needs along with some standard fields. Can make it work for exactly what we need. Customer service is very good. Their personnel are always friendly and knowledgeable.,Putting in multiple email addresses in one field makes it hard to report out for mass emailing. Would like to see that field set up to handle multiple emails and be able to report each one separately. It would be nice to be able to change the look of some of the standard reports. Also, the information that goes into the standard reports. It would also be nice to be able to include soft credits in some reports where they do not currently show up.,5,We have not actually done any ROI in regards to eTapestry since we are a non-profit and our focus is on serving our specific population.,,Google Forms, inRESONANCELook into eTap for a good database optionWe currently use eTapestry as our Donor Database as well as our CRM. We have updated from another database since last year and have been implementing different parts of the database into our website and daily use. The system is used across the entire organization by every staff member.,Being able to add constituents and manage their contact information Being able to add and manage donations/payments, etc Run reports and lists that tell your story,More connectivity. Being able to connect to other platforms or software More customization. It is a little monotonous and doesn't allow for total customization More design friendly. The different options to design things within the application lack creativity and ability to personalize.,7,We have increased our donations We have better records of our constituents We have been able to correct some of the historical problems we had with our data,,WordPress, MailChimp, StripeeTapestry, better than the rest....until it's not.eTapestry came along at a time when we were very frustrated by our previous donor management software. By comparison, eTapestry offered an improved interface, more powerful reporting options, and a module specifically intended to support our fundraising model. Since adopting eTapestry about four years ago, it's been used exclusively by staff members related to fundraising, communications, grants, and donor relations, but not at all by program staff.,Mass updating: eTapestry includes very powerful tools for making mass changes to many (or all) of your constituent accounts at once. Mass emails: After moving to eTapestry, we were able to consolidate our mass email/communication efforts and drop our Constant Contact account. The tools eTap offers did the job just fine, and it was great to have all our data in one place. Queries: While I think eTapestry could improve by simplifying its approach to data sorting, I love being able to set up a query and then apply that query to communications, updates, and a whole host of reports.,Interface: Some of our staff members never really got comfortable with the user interface. In many areas, it's unnecessarily cluttered and complicated. Pledges: The help forums are full of people begging for better pledge tools, including being able to apply gifts to pledges retrospectively. Queries: Like I said, I love some aspects of the queries and hate others. Building compound queries out of compound queries is bad enough, but when you need to then edit one? Ugh. Very overcomplicated, and there ARE better ways.,5,It was aligned with our fundraising model (though that is no longer the case), which directly supported and guided our fundraising efforts, to great success. It significantly reduced the amount of time spent laboring over grant reports that sometimes ask for very complicated financial updates. Its mass update tools allowed us to clean our data ourselves, instead of paying for extra data services from eTap/Blackbaud. Its mass communication tools allowed us to save money and consolidate our data.,,Bloomerang, Adobe Illustrator CC, WordPresseTapestry - Great for starting out!At FSL we use etapestry in the development and communications department. A total of 5 people have access to the database in the company with only 3 able to make changes to any information entered. This software has given us a single platform with which we track donations, donor levels, campaign progress, event attendance, and volunteer hours, as well as board member activity.,User-friendly dashboard! Great training available for all users and user levels. Tracks campaign progress in a visible and easy to understand way. Handles multiple campaigns, funding areas and goals with ease.,The query and reporting functions are somewhat limited and take a while to set up. User-defined fields could be more clear.,8,The ROI is great! We are just starting our development processes, and the pricing couldn't be better.,I <3 Blackbaud!It effectively keeps track of constituents. It also provides an integrated platform between the online and offline word, thus making constituent communications timely, accurate and up to date. Our fundraising department uses this product.,This software is very easy to use and it is also intuitive. There isn't much of a learning curve when it comes to this software, especially if you are used to more complicated CRMs. The support line is always helpful and if the support specialist can't help you, they will find the answer...all the way up to the product engineers if necessary. The best part about working with Blackbaud is that the company truly believes in your mission; they are there to help you leverage technology to meet your missional goals.,The product is very linear. If you have multiple segments/complicated campaigns, I would not recommend this product.,9,Raiser's Edge, Luminate Online and Luminate TeamRaiser,The Raisers Edge, Luminate Online, Luminate TeamRaisereTapestry is a win for non profits!eTapestry was used within the development department for the maintenance of contributions. It helped keep track of donors and what they donated. It allowed us to keep a database of addresses, names, notes and other information so that we could pursue healthy relationships with our community.,The payment function is eTapestry is extremely user friendly. Worked very well at auctions and other events held by the organization. eTapestry retains a lot of information about your donors so that you can engage in meaningful relationships with them. eTapestry keeps your records organized well. It is easy to navigate the program.,At times, eTapestry could be complicated because of all the different functions it provides.,10,eTapesty allowed our team to input donations quickly and efficiently. eTapestry helped our team develop meaningful relationships with our donors. During the time we used eTapestry, we were able to output better records and noticeably add to our database.,The Raisers Edge,Microsoft Project, JIRA Software, Atlassian Confluence,No,Product Features Product Usability Product Reputation Vendor Reputation,If we had to change our evaluation and selection process, I may have suggested using the trial periods for some of the other products out there that are similar to eTapestry. This may have shown us what other programs are capable of but also why eTapestry was the best choice.,Yes,10,No,When we began to add different modules onto the program, we needed help navigating them and learning how to use them in the best ways possible. They took the time to go through the new modules and explain the different functions within each one. The support team was always patient and friendly and a pleasure to work with while learning the new modules.,Cashing out donations at events was always very seamless when working in eTapestry. The process was smooth and easy for both the employees of the organization as well as the donors and attendees of the events. Inputting the different donations each week was simple and quick. It kept the team organized and provided good records of the transactions. It was easy to keep track of the different donors in eTapestry.eTapestry- The Good, the Bad and the UglyeTapestry is Neighborhood Healthcare's donor management system. We currently utilize it in the Philanthropy and Communications Department to maintain our donor contact and gift information. Our accounting department has just recently been granted access to our reports in eTapestry so they have more accurate and timely information. We utilize their DIY Forms for our online donation page and online event ticket sales, and we regularly import and export information to maintain an accurate mailing list. eTapestry allows us to stay in contact with our donors in the manner in which they prefer.,eTapestry provides great training for all levels of users. There is an easily searchable User Manual and Knowledgebase that are available at any time. In addition, eTapestry provides recorded training and live webinars with instructors that walk you through certain features. The DIY Forms are extremely user friendly. Even if you do not have any computer coding experience, they are self-explanatory and easy to implement onto your website. The diversity and amount of reports that are available are extremely helpful. The system already has recommended reports for general fundraising purposes, but additional reports can be customized for your specific needs.,It would be extremely helpful if eTapestry allowed for multiple "sticky notes" to be added to account records. If there is a way, I'm currently not aware. We have different colored sticky notes for different types of notes and sometimes more than one sticky note applies. eTapestry integrates with Constant Contact, but it would be great if there were a module within eTapestry that allowed the user to creative attractive enewsletters/eblasts, from within eTapestry instead of needing yet another platform.,10,When we went through proper eTapestry training, we saw an increase in efficiency. Learning to import/export records for updating significantly reduced the number of staff hours spend on data management, especially after our large fundraiser. We are able to respond or reach out to donors faster because we can find their contact information immediately, and we make more meaningful connections with them because we keep accurate notes about them. Again, after specific trainings, reporting on our progress throughout the year became much easier. We also found ways to reduce the number of mailings we were sending out by utilizing the end of the year tax receipts for donors.,,Constant Contact, Basecamp, DropboxPiece of CakeeTapestry works great for entering data concerning donations. At a non-profit organization, I would record monetary and supply donations (like clothing and bedding.) Since I would volunteer two times a month, I was thankful that eTapestry was easy to remember. It is also intuitive - easy to figure out how to use it for other needs.,Intuitive. Easy to make corrections. Excellent for recording donations.,It seems so basic.,7,Volunteer efficiency. Fast thank you letters for donations.,The Raisers Edge,Microsoft Exchange, Google Drive,Entering data. Retrieving data. Correcting data.,Work can get repetitious.,9YAY ETAPESTRYI LOVE eTapestry. It is the most user-friendly database I've ever used. Ever. Easiest format for establishing LIMITED permissions for other staff and board members. HIGHLY recommend! The standard and benchmark reports are logical and can be viewed or exported in any format. The live chat tech support is the BEST I've ever used, ever.,User friendly, best method for establishing permissions. Logical reports. I LOVE the dashboard.,9,Increase Board engagement because they can do contact reports We can establish donor profiles and individual giving plans,DonorPerfect, DonorPro CRM, Salesforce Community Cloud and Bloomerang,QuickBooks ProeTap User ThoughtsIt is being used for a development database. I am the power and primary user - however it is available to all members of development team.,Field Flexibility Search Capability Report Design Flexibility,Queries Love to have pop up help prompts,6,Increased efficiency when staff makes the commitment to use the tool. Maintains records of interactions so there is historical accuracy when speaking to a donor/potential donor. Streamlines reporting.,ASP.NETeTapestry reviewOur organization's development department uses eTapestry to track pledges and payments from individual and corporate donors, foundations and government funders.,Tracks pledges and payments toward pledges well,Not intuitive or user friendly Extremely difficult to create and run reports Clunky interface that is difficult to navigate Very slow,1,It's made running basic reports a headache, which has made my work less efficient.,Salesforce.com,1eTapestry review from an in-house experteTapestry is being used as our donor management database. We are a small organization and it is primarily used by our development team. I used eTapestry for similar purposes in a previous job, so I am the in-house trainer, so to speak. I also use it for my own work managing the organization's volunteers.,It is easy to enter data. Finding a particular person's file is fairly easy. Its online support is really good. You can instant chat with folks from the company to walk you through questions or problems and that's helped me tremendously.,I don't think it's easy to learn in comparison to other donor databases. Reports in particular are not user-friendly. Getting the reporting that you want can be difficult until you know the system really well.,7,Better customer service- the web based design makes it easy for multiple people in an organization to access information on a donor or customer. Because it's not very user friendly, and I've worked in small shops, people have gotten frustrated with the reporting features....that part has gone slowly. I personally thought it helped us organize our files, increase revenue from mailings, and connect better with donors.,7,8Rarely the best dealMy organization does not use eTapestry, but we have worked with a handful of clients that do. These organizations have all been small (&lt;10 paid staff) organizations using it to manage donations. In each case, it is used primarily by the development staff, but reports are shared with everyone. Each organization implemented it in order to raise more money.,Solid out of the box functionality. You don't have to spend any time thinking about how you plan to use it - you can get started right away. If you're just tracking individual donors (who may or may not be part of a family unit) this is a solid choice. A lot more functionality than the small, low-priced competitors that pop up all the time. Blackbaud has been doing this a long time, and they do understand raising money for nonprofits. Good support for paper mailings. Pricing usually isn't per user, so you can definitely share with the whole organization. Good tech support - responsive and knowledgeable. Integrated email marketing and payment processor, both perfectly reasonable. Good de-duplication functionality.,Grants management is theoretically available, but in my opinion, more trouble than it is worth. Most clients seem to decide it makes more sense to just use a spreadsheet, and I can't really argue. It is definitely built to track families that donate rather than foundations, corporations, or other "organizations." It can be done, but all the organizations I've worked with wind up with poor-quality data about organizations because it isn't too easy to track this correctly in eTap. If you're just tracking individual donors, this won't be a problem for you. I don't actually have a problem with the UI, but all the clients I've talked to hate it. They feel that it is cluttered and old looking, and they feel like they do a lot of clicking to get to what they want. When I give them something they're happier with, I don't know that I'm saving them that many clicks, but they say they like other things a lot more. The reporting is acceptable, but a little clunky. A report preview in the window where you're building a report would save a lot of time. I've worked with people who are capable of creating reports in eTap, but find it so difficult that they wind up using spreadsheets instead. Because it is built as an old-school software product, it doesn't have an API. You can't connect to anything else, and you can't build new functionality for your organization. (In this respect, I'm biased towards competitor Salesforce.com, which has an open API an an appexchange of 1000+ apps.) Pricing is pretty inconsistent, at least to my knowledge. I've seen similar organizations reporting wildly different prices to me. I just hope that they're giving me inaccurate information. Tracking constituent's participation in different things is limited. You can create new checkboxes to indicate that someone came to your gala or volunteered, but those checkboxes seem to get out of control pretty quickly.,2,I haven't had an experience yet with an organization that felt their needs were being met by eTapestry, so that's a tough question for me. Then again, nonprofits come to us when they have some kind of problem to solve, so we're not hearing from the people who adore it.,The Raiser's Edge,Salesforce.com,Donor Perfect,GiftWorks,1,No,8,Yes,I don't feel like I got exceptional support, but I did get high quality support.eTapestry-a good solution gone badMy organization switched to eTapestry nearly five years ago. Right after we switched it was purchased by Blackbaud, the nonprofit database giant. I suspect Blackbaud just isn't investing in the product, though I don't know that for a fact. For a cloud-based solution, it has been updated rarely and just isn't keeping up with trends, nor has it over the last 4.5 years. We selected the product to address the problem of staff storing contact records in multiple places. It has failed as a solution for that problem. We hoped to use it for event attendance tracking, but it has not worked out for that. We wanted to use it to track donation records and that is a place where it has succeeded. We also use it to email our email list. We originally wanted this to be the database that the entire organization used to track contacts, but users found it clunky and so adoption was low. It is no longer being used by the entire organization and is now just used by 3-5 people who use it for contact tracking, mass emailing, and donation tracking.,eTapestry succeeds as a donation tracking system. You can easily enter donation records and can report on those records. The mass email part of eTapestry works and has decent reporting capabilities. It's forms are outdated and the email editor is clunky, so most users accustomed to more current tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact will find it frustrating.,The main problem with eTapestry is that it lags in keeping up with current competitors. It feels outdated and abandoned. The user interface is terrible, which leads to constant complaints from staff. None of the actions are intuitive, so users feel like they have to search for minutes to figure out how to do the most basic things. People started using other software for the same functions eTapestry provides, which has left us with multiple email lists in different places, and a file that has duplicates, triplicates, or worse. We are going to be leaving eTapestry because of these problems. There is no integration with social media. Competing products have moved ahead and are making social media a part of all of their contact profiles, but I don't believe eTapestry offers any kind of social media appending. There is inadequate unpaid training. The training modules offered are expensive, and staff have not been happy with them in the past. Since the software is not very intuitive, there is an increased need for training. This puts us in a bind. They are slow to respond to concerns. I've been sending out warning signals that we were considering leaving for years, and it has taken up to a year to get a response to a bad review that they solicited themselves. My concerns about areas where they are lagging behind competition have been brushed over. There are some important things they need to address that are not even on their radar. The mobile site is terrible and they are uninterested in streamlining mobile login. The site is slow. When you are updating records, the site should be speedier. This is not a browser issue-this is based on years of experience on multiple browsers and multiple computers. Mass emails can take up to 24 hours to be delivered.,2,Unfortunately it has led to staff frustration and decreased efficiency. Staff are very negative about this product, and it became a point of contention. Staff would secretly use other tools because they were so dissatisfied. Early on, it was very helpful in communicating with our growing email list.,,1Churches love eTapestry!Our organization utilizes eTapestry to manage all members and donors for our church. Currently, our entire organization uses the system to track families, relationships, giving and trends, and correspondence. It assists us in keeping updated and relevant data on our church body.,eTapestry makes it easy to enter and connect family members. This is important to us so that we can reach out to the appropriate people for events. eTapestry has a variety of reporting options which assist us in gleaning data we need quickly. eTapestry's management menu makes it easy to add additional users and get them up and running on the system. This is integral in getting the system broadly used and managed by a variety of ministry department heads.,It is not easy to manage pledge giving. If a donor gives on a recurring schedule through automatic credit card transitions, it is impossible to categorize the gift as a payment. I have to go into the transaction, reverse it, and then recreate the gift as a payment to count against the pledge. The dashboard reports are not diverse enough. They often misrepresent data, especially by counting pledges made as "gifts received". It is difficult to create your own reports if the standard reports do not represent the data you need.,7,ETapestry allows us to have the most updated information to provide great customer service to our members. It is simple to add notes or update information upon talking to members, therefore improving our data each time we interact. We also find it helpful that we can track attendance trends by matching attendee numbers to specific email contacts, which we store in eTapestry. We can improve our advertising by being able to see which events had great turn outs. We highly trust the integrity of the data we store and trust it to generate annual giving statements, which are used for tax purposes of our members.,10eTapestry - an honest revieweTapestry was used to process donations and to manage donor data.,It's a great entry-level donor data system for small nonprofits. It's a great alternative to more generalized small-scale database products like Access and FileMaker Pro. It allows for easy searching of donor data. It provides an easy way to export donor data for mailing lists, financial reports, etc.,It's a very simple system so it doesn't allow for tracking more complex types of giving like split gifts. The data entry options are limited and only so many fields can be created.,4,It's not suited for environments where there is a high level of donor cultivation.,Salesforce.com,The Raiser's Edge,Infusionsoft,FileMaker Pro,Microsoft Access,3,No,7,Yes,Entering gifts Exporting data,Entering complex gift types Entering complex donor bio data,9eTapestry offers everything we could ask for, and moreWe use eTapestry in the Development department. It's a very powerful tool that helps us keep track of complex and extensive donor information, pull reports with all sorts of data types, and manage correspondence to an extensive donor list. It helps us ensure that information is accurate, that we contact people on time, that our accounting is 100% accurate, and that we meet our fundraising goals. We also use the online product sales feature for fundraising campaigns involving peer-to-peer fundraising and selling promotional items.,eTapestry's correspondence functions are amazing. We can rely on its powerful reporting functions to pull accurate lists for things like pledge payments, thank-you letters, lapsed pledges, and all sorts of other campaigns. The online training functions are so helpful. You can study at your own pace and go as deep as you want, because just about every function is covered in great detail. It also makes training easier, because the supervisor doesn't have to explain everything whenever we hire a new staff member. eTapestry support is thorough, timely, and friendly. They've helped us solve many problems. My favorite part is that they can look into your account to see what you need to do. If I'm trying to pull a report and I know it's not working right, a support person can see how I've set up the report and can explain, all via online chat, what I need to change to get what I'm looking for. They must be experts in the software.,The interface could be modernized a bit, but it's really not that bad at all. When it exports a long batch of letters to Word, everything is in table format and it takes a bit longer to perfect the formatting just the way I like it. I really can't think of anything else. We regularly have chats about how great eTapestry is.,10,I wasn't there before we got eTapestry, but it helps us keep up correspondence way faster than in organizations I've worked that don't have it. Employees are more effective because of the in-depth training videos, so we can become very skilled and undertake more complex and useful tasks. It broadens the scope of projects we can complete. Instead of pulling simple reports for very basic campaigns, we can dream up the exact type of data we want, segment donors in so many different ways, and target our donor communications to very specific audiences. I think it has made our annual campaign much more effective.,10eTap - tap into professionalismeTapestry was used to track donations to our Benevolent Care Fund, our Benefit Gala, memorial gifts, and any other donations. It was used by our Stewardship Manager and I was the person to input the donations and generate the letters.,Generates professional acknowledgement letters Easy to learn Defaults make multiple entries easier,I had difficulty running reports, but it may be because our Corporate Office didn't give me permission. Or, that I didn't use that feature much at all, so it could be my own lack of experience in that aspect.,9,I was able to enter donations and generate letters within 24 hours of receiving them, so that was excellent customer service. Because the letters were automatically generated, that saved time.,GoldMine,1So so.We used it to email our supporters about different events and fundraisers our organization was having.,Email segmentation Email creation Analytics,Templates Ecommerce Minimizing all the tabs,7,It helped me communicate well with our supporters We received great feedback on our campaigns Was difficult sometimes to keep track of emails,MailChimp,Salesforce.com,5Somewhat effective, depending on your needsWe use eTapestry to maintain a database of our contacts (about 30,000) and send them newsletters with updates on our work, notify them of events, ask for donations, etc. It is not being used across the organization, but rather by a handful of people in communications and finance. We use it mostly to keep track of our constituents, especially as many of our employees do a lot of networking at conferences, etc.,The ability to have multiple users who can navigate the site and once and use it for different things. The availability of online tutorials is helpful. Easy to use templates, once they are designed.,Much of it is counter intuitive -- for instance, the whole process of creating UDFs and storing them can be very complicated, and the menus in which they appear are not straightforward either. It doesn't feel like the program understands that it would be most helpful to keep the most used tools available in menus, etc., instead of having to go search for them deep down in lists full of UDFs. The forms that have to be filled to create accounts have a lot of extraneous info that leads to the possibility of a lot of duplicates, bad accounts, etc. Too much info! Not enough of a filter for creating duplicates -- I think the requirements to make an account should be more strict and the filter should be better for duplicates.,5,Increased efficiency and ease with monthly newsletters by using helpful templates. Negative: spending money sending emails to people who are not getting or reading them--and it costs a good amount to hire the consultant to go through and help us delete duplicates, bad accounts, etc. Very complicated system makes it so that it only makes sense for a few people in the org to become "experts" in the program--unfortunately it is not very suited to an organization-wide use.,salesforce,Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Exchange, Adobe Acrobat DCeTapestry for Use in a Small Non-Profit OrganizationWe used eTapestry as a CRM to manage our relationships - donors, volunteers and those who contribute to our organization in-kind. We managed approaches within eTapestry (such as person-to-person connections and/or annual appeal), we managed campaigns (such as the direct mail campaign or #GivingTuesday) and we kept a profile of key stakeholders using the note functionality. We also integrated eTapestry as the online giving platform of our website and managed all acknowledgments an end of year tax letters.,Automated acknowledgments from online donations. Manage constituents and keep profile of key stakeholders. Cloud-based tool that is accessible from any location.,Cumbersome reporting tools. Too many steps to generate a solid mailing list. Lack of integration with accounting software is unfortunate.,7,Impacted aligning one's giving patterns with person giving interests. Solid integration with website.Two Years of eTapestryeTapestry is used to record all donations that are received by our non-profit organization. It is a way to log constituents and donations in an organized and efficient way. It is also used so that we have another record of donations, aside from accounting.,eTapestry has a strong customer service team that will give you step by step instructions if you are struggling with any processes.,eTapestry has potential to better its thank you options. I would love to be able to auto populate thank yous in a fast and user-friendly way. The look of eTapestry could be improved, I think that a re-design my be helpful to simplify the website and draw customers in as it is not very inviting at this time. I would like to see an easier way to create queries and run reports. eTapestry does have an excellent support team but I would like to see a more intuitive site. I see room for improvement in compatibility with other donation sites and programs.,7,eTapestry has given my organization increased employee efficiency and organization.,2,8,9,7The Good, Bad, and UglyeTapestry was being used only by the Development department. It housed all of our donor contact information, in addition to, donations, volunteer hours, pledges, and monthly gifts. Aside from individual donors, it housed organization gifts as well and grants.,Capture donor information Track donations Track if an individual is a donor and/or volunteer.,End user customizations of fields/page layouts More detailed reporting Fund/Source code capabilities.,1,Ability to track donor information in one place instead of using spreadsheets or ACT Better customer service, in that we were able to see if one was a donor and/or volunteer to thank them for both Negative - user friendliness of the reporting and page layout customizing,Luminate CRM and Analytics,Luminate TeamRaiser,Salesforce.com,PIDI (Public Interest Data Inc),1,3,1,Tracking donor information Seeing if a donor is a volunteer as well Tracking volunteer hours Pulling acknowledgements fairly easy with customizations,No,Price Vendor Reputation Existing Relationship with the Vendor,I would evaluate additional products and not go with one product because of particular employees biased opinion due to the owner of the product.,Don't know,Timeliness Cost Time management for small development department,8,Online training In-person training Self-taught,8,8,Yes, the product had lots of documentation and tutorials to help learn the system. It is not too difficult to understand, except for reporting. I would definitely recommend creating a SOP for your best business practices.,2,No - we have not done any customization to the interface,No - we have not done any custom code,No,7,No,I was unable to pull an extensive report. eTapestry allows you to link multiple reports together and then subtract out the ones that overflow. I could not get the report to pull what I needed so support had to go in to the system and create it for me so that it would be accurate.,Adding accounts Adding donations Acknowledgements,Reports Customizing fields Customizing page layouts,1,1,7,6,none,Constant Contact,,,Never used integration.,4,6,Don't recall.,Be sure to review contracts and make sure that product does exactly what you need it to for the next 3-5+ years.,Yes,Faster turnaround when processing donations Relationship association with donors,Not sure.,No,NoGets the job done, for someeTapestry was primarily used to manage donor contacts and track charitable gifts to my organization. All employees referenced eTapestry in that respect. It also was used by a smaller number of employees to track recurring memberships, annual solicitation reminders and event attendees. Finally, one employee used the product to occasionally reconcile with our bookkeeping software.,eTapestry's "User defined fields" offered quite a bit of flexibility. I was able to create database structures customized to the needs of my organization. The query and reporting system was fairly easy to use. It required training for employed but they eventually got it. The chat support is excellent. This is the strongest feature. Chat and phone support made a huge difference.,eTapestry hasn't received any major modifications since shortly after its purchase by Blackbaud. I do not see it as a well supported platform with a long term future. eTapestry has always been weak in event management and moves management. The moves management module was sorely lacking and event management did not exist. The biggest challenge our staff faced was reporting. After years of working with the platform, I still don't think our executives were getting satisfactory reporting. I was an expert at eTapestry and felt very confident manipulating the reporting and query structure but I was the only one. That skill left when I left. It involved memorizing dozens of rules and tricks that allowed a user to get accurate data to answer a given question.,4,Better customer service. Better reporting to board and executives Better access to data analysis Difficulties in reporting often led to corrupt lists and slow reports.,,5
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eTapestry
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eTapestry Reviews

eTapestry
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Score 6.7 out of 101
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Reviews (1-25 of 28)

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Karen Tuecke profile photo
May 07, 2019

eTapestry Review: "eTapesty for all your nonprofit needs in fund development."

Karen Tuecke
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Blackbaud's eTapestry on a daily basis to track and record information about our constituency. The eTapestry program is ideal for a small organization such as ours. It allows for queries and reports needed in order to conduct business. Without eTapestry, we would be lost.
  • Daily, we are entering data about our partners in mission. We use that data to create queries and to run reports. eTapestry has made our work easier.
  • Our processes are now streamlined with eTapestry. We know what we need daily, weekly, monthly, etc. and eTapestry gets the work done for us.
  • Deposits and credit card transactions are easily managed by eTapestry.
  • We conduct a lot of donor visits. It would be nice to have a mapping option to layout donors in a certain area and map out the visits, rather than us using Google.
If you are an organization with less than 10,000 constituents, eTapestry is the program for you. It is easily managed for small nonprofits and the support for technical issues is good. Blackbaud has a whole online knowledgebase and educational videos to help you learn what would be best for your organization.
Read Karen Tuecke's full review
Diana Robinson profile photo
July 20, 2018

eTapestry Review: "eTaspestry, Weaving a tracking system that works!"

Diana Robinson
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We are using eTapestry in our Development Department to track donors and prospective donors. It addresses the problem of tracking donations and being able to report on them in various ways.
  • The constant contact interface makes it easy to send out e-newsletters and track who actually opens the emails. Makes reporting easy.
  • It is good to be able to define the fields that are specific for your own needs along with some standard fields. Can make it work for exactly what we need.
  • Customer service is very good. Their personnel are always friendly and knowledgeable.
  • Putting in multiple email addresses in one field makes it hard to report out for mass emailing. Would like to see that field set up to handle multiple emails and be able to report each one separately.
  • It would be nice to be able to change the look of some of the standard reports. Also, the information that goes into the standard reports.
  • It would also be nice to be able to include soft credits in some reports where they do not currently show up.
eTapestry is well suited for tracking information about the donors and their giving history.

It is not well suited for event tracking even with the workarounds they recommend.
Read Diana Robinson's full review
Steven Senft profile photo
July 03, 2018

eTapestry Review: "Look into eTap for a good database option"

Steven Senft
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We currently use eTapestry as our Donor Database as well as our CRM. We have updated from another database since last year and have been implementing different parts of the database into our website and daily use.

The system is used across the entire organization by every staff member.
  • Being able to add constituents and manage their contact information
  • Being able to add and manage donations/payments, etc
  • Run reports and lists that tell your story
  • More connectivity. Being able to connect to other platforms or software
  • More customization. It is a little monotonous and doesn't allow for total customization
  • More design friendly. The different options to design things within the application lack creativity and ability to personalize.
For the size of the organization that we are, eTapestry is a great option when looking for a database that allows you to control and manage a limited amount of individuals.

When it comes to larger organization or complex ones at that, really look into the different options out there. There are many databases that will do some of the things that eTap does without being super complicated.
Read Steven Senft's full review
Michelle Green Arnson profile photo
November 10, 2017

Review: "eTapestry, better than the rest....until it's not."

Michelle Green Arnson
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry came along at a time when we were very frustrated by our previous donor management software. By comparison, eTapestry offered an improved interface, more powerful reporting options, and a module specifically intended to support our fundraising model. Since adopting eTapestry about four years ago, it's been used exclusively by staff members related to fundraising, communications, grants, and donor relations, but not at all by program staff.
  • Mass updating: eTapestry includes very powerful tools for making mass changes to many (or all) of your constituent accounts at once.
  • Mass emails: After moving to eTapestry, we were able to consolidate our mass email/communication efforts and drop our Constant Contact account. The tools eTap offers did the job just fine, and it was great to have all our data in one place.
  • Queries: While I think eTapestry could improve by simplifying its approach to data sorting, I love being able to set up a query and then apply that query to communications, updates, and a whole host of reports.
  • Interface: Some of our staff members never really got comfortable with the user interface. In many areas, it's unnecessarily cluttered and complicated.
  • Pledges: The help forums are full of people begging for better pledge tools, including being able to apply gifts to pledges retrospectively.
  • Queries: Like I said, I love some aspects of the queries and hate others. Building compound queries out of compound queries is bad enough, but when you need to then edit one? Ugh. Very overcomplicated, and there ARE better ways.
We're actually in the process of migrating to a new donor management database that we found to be much simpler to use and report from. I'd still recommend eTapestry to organizations where the users will be able to get up to speed quickly and not feel overwhelmed, but I'd recommend something else for an org that would be relying on less tech savvy users or volunteers for data entry and reporting.
Read Michelle Green Arnson's full review
Emily Wolfe profile photo
December 14, 2016

User Review: "eTapestry - Great for starting out!"

Emily Wolfe
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
At FSL we use etapestry in the development and communications department. A total of 5 people have access to the database in the company with only 3 able to make changes to any information entered. This software has given us a single platform with which we track donations, donor levels, campaign progress, event attendance, and volunteer hours, as well as board member activity.
  • User-friendly dashboard!
  • Great training available for all users and user levels.
  • Tracks campaign progress in a visible and easy to understand way.
  • Handles multiple campaigns, funding areas and goals with ease.
  • The query and reporting functions are somewhat limited and take a while to set up.
  • User-defined fields could be more clear.
eTapestry is a wonderful starter database for smaller non-profits. The price is wonderful, the training is superb, and though it has a few limitations, it is a great place to start.
Read Emily Wolfe's full review
Jackie Armstrong Zimmerman profile photo
December 15, 2016

eTapestry Review: "I <3 Blackbaud!"

Jackie Armstrong Zimmerman
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It effectively keeps track of constituents. It also provides an integrated platform between the online and offline word, thus making constituent communications timely, accurate and up to date. Our fundraising department uses this product.
  • This software is very easy to use and it is also intuitive. There isn't much of a learning curve when it comes to this software, especially if you are used to more complicated CRMs.
  • The support line is always helpful and if the support specialist can't help you, they will find the answer...all the way up to the product engineers if necessary. The best part about working with Blackbaud is that the company truly believes in your mission; they are there to help you leverage technology to meet your missional goals.
  • The product is very linear. If you have multiple segments/complicated campaigns, I would not recommend this product.
For a small nonprofit, without many fundraising campaigns/constituent segments, I would recommend this product. If you need complicated reports and deep data dives, this is not an appropriate CRM.
Read Jackie Armstrong Zimmerman's full review
Wendy Targus profile photo
December 09, 2015

User Review: "eTapestry is a win for non profits!"

Wendy Targus
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry was used within the development department for the maintenance of contributions. It helped keep track of donors and what they donated. It allowed us to keep a database of addresses, names, notes and other information so that we could pursue healthy relationships with our community.
  • The payment function is eTapestry is extremely user friendly. Worked very well at auctions and other events held by the organization.
  • eTapestry retains a lot of information about your donors so that you can engage in meaningful relationships with them.
  • eTapestry keeps your records organized well. It is easy to navigate the program.
  • At times, eTapestry could be complicated because of all the different functions it provides.
eTapestry is a great tool for departments that handle donations of any kind. It is well suited for organizations large and small. It would also be a good tool for organizations that deal with a lot of customers. It has the ability to save all kinds of information including details that might help a customer feel important to an organization.
Read Wendy Targus's full review
Amber Berkey profile photo
December 08, 2015

Review: "eTapestry- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"

Amber Berkey
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry is Neighborhood Healthcare's donor management system. We currently utilize it in the Philanthropy and Communications Department to maintain our donor contact and gift information. Our accounting department has just recently been granted access to our reports in eTapestry so they have more accurate and timely information. We utilize their DIY Forms for our online donation page and online event ticket sales, and we regularly import and export information to maintain an accurate mailing list. eTapestry allows us to stay in contact with our donors in the manner in which they prefer.
  • eTapestry provides great training for all levels of users. There is an easily searchable User Manual and Knowledgebase that are available at any time. In addition, eTapestry provides recorded training and live webinars with instructors that walk you through certain features.
  • The DIY Forms are extremely user friendly. Even if you do not have any computer coding experience, they are self-explanatory and easy to implement onto your website.
  • The diversity and amount of reports that are available are extremely helpful. The system already has recommended reports for general fundraising purposes, but additional reports can be customized for your specific needs.
  • It would be extremely helpful if eTapestry allowed for multiple "sticky notes" to be added to account records. If there is a way, I'm currently not aware. We have different colored sticky notes for different types of notes and sometimes more than one sticky note applies.
  • eTapestry integrates with Constant Contact, but it would be great if there were a module within eTapestry that allowed the user to creative attractive enewsletters/eblasts, from within eTapestry instead of needing yet another platform.
eTapestry is well suited when maintaining contact and gift information for donors, volunteers, prospective donors, etc.
Read Amber Berkey's full review
Dana Heimark profile photo
December 09, 2015

eTapestry Review: "Piece of Cake"

Dana Heimark
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry works great for entering data concerning donations. At a non-profit organization, I would record monetary and supply donations (like clothing and bedding.) Since I would volunteer two times a month, I was thankful that eTapestry was easy to remember. It is also intuitive - easy to figure out how to use it for other needs.
  • Intuitive.
  • Easy to make corrections.
  • Excellent for recording donations.
  • It seems so basic.
When volunteers are involved, eTapestry is well suited. Volunteers can be self-sufficient with it after just a short time.
Read Dana Heimark's full review
Christine Destry profile photo
December 28, 2015

User Review: "YAY ETAPESTRY"

Christine Destry
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
I LOVE eTapestry. It is the most user-friendly database I've ever used. Ever. Easiest format for establishing LIMITED permissions for other staff and board members. HIGHLY recommend! The standard and benchmark reports are logical and can be viewed or exported in any format. The live chat tech support is the BEST I've ever used, ever.
  • User friendly, best method for establishing permissions.
  • Logical reports.
  • I LOVE the dashboard.
eTapestry is well suited for all fundraising!
Read Christine Destry's full review
Tara Stepanian profile photo
December 18, 2015

eTapestry Review: "eTap User Thoughts"

Tara Stepanian
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It is being used for a development database. I am the power and primary user - however it is available to all members of development team.
  • Field Flexibility
  • Search Capability
  • Report Design Flexibility
  • Queries
  • Love to have pop up help prompts
eTapestry is best suited for a development function. It could be used as a sales database but isn't ideal.
Read Tara Stepanian's full review
Allison Farer profile photo
September 21, 2014

"eTapestry review"

Allison Farer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Our organization's development department uses eTapestry to track pledges and payments from individual and corporate donors, foundations and government funders.
  • Tracks pledges and payments toward pledges well
  • Not intuitive or user friendly
  • Extremely difficult to create and run reports
  • Clunky interface that is difficult to navigate
  • Very slow
It's fine for tracking pledges and payments, but not great for capturing relationships, running reports, or setting up task lists.
Read Allison Farer's full review
Glenna Harkins profile photo
December 18, 2014

"eTapestry review from an in-house expert"

Glenna Harkins
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry is being used as our donor management database. We are a small organization and it is primarily used by our development team. I used eTapestry for similar purposes in a previous job, so I am the in-house trainer, so to speak. I also use it for my own work managing the organization's volunteers.
  • It is easy to enter data.
  • Finding a particular person's file is fairly easy.
  • Its online support is really good. You can instant chat with folks from the company to walk you through questions or problems and that's helped me tremendously.
  • I don't think it's easy to learn in comparison to other donor databases.
  • Reports in particular are not user-friendly.
  • Getting the reporting that you want can be difficult until you know the system really well.
I think that if you invest the time to learn the system, it is able to do everything that you need it to do. It's also pretty inexpensive as donor databases go. I will say that it's probably best suited to a work environment where someone is going to specialize in its use. It's not user friendly enough for a one-person shop where a development person has many other competing priorities. It can be frustrating unless you put that time in.
Read Glenna Harkins's full review
Anna Hazel Crotty profile photo
August 19, 2014

eTapestry Review: "Rarely the best deal"

Anna Hazel Crotty
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
My organization does not use eTapestry, but we have worked with a handful of clients that do. These organizations have all been small (<10 paid staff) organizations using it to manage donations. In each case, it is used primarily by the development staff, but reports are shared with everyone. Each organization implemented it in order to raise more money.
  • Solid out of the box functionality. You don't have to spend any time thinking about how you plan to use it - you can get started right away. If you're just tracking individual donors (who may or may not be part of a family unit) this is a solid choice.
  • A lot more functionality than the small, low-priced competitors that pop up all the time. Blackbaud has been doing this a long time, and they do understand raising money for nonprofits.
  • Good support for paper mailings.
  • Pricing usually isn't per user, so you can definitely share with the whole organization.
  • Good tech support - responsive and knowledgeable.
  • Integrated email marketing and payment processor, both perfectly reasonable.
  • Good de-duplication functionality.
  • Grants management is theoretically available, but in my opinion, more trouble than it is worth. Most clients seem to decide it makes more sense to just use a spreadsheet, and I can't really argue.
  • It is definitely built to track families that donate rather than foundations, corporations, or other "organizations." It can be done, but all the organizations I've worked with wind up with poor-quality data about organizations because it isn't too easy to track this correctly in eTap. If you're just tracking individual donors, this won't be a problem for you.
  • I don't actually have a problem with the UI, but all the clients I've talked to hate it. They feel that it is cluttered and old looking, and they feel like they do a lot of clicking to get to what they want. When I give them something they're happier with, I don't know that I'm saving them that many clicks, but they say they like other things a lot more.
  • The reporting is acceptable, but a little clunky. A report preview in the window where you're building a report would save a lot of time. I've worked with people who are capable of creating reports in eTap, but find it so difficult that they wind up using spreadsheets instead.
  • Because it is built as an old-school software product, it doesn't have an API. You can't connect to anything else, and you can't build new functionality for your organization. (In this respect, I'm biased towards competitor Salesforce.com, which has an open API an an appexchange of 1000+ apps.)
  • Pricing is pretty inconsistent, at least to my knowledge. I've seen similar organizations reporting wildly different prices to me. I just hope that they're giving me inaccurate information.
  • Tracking constituent's participation in different things is limited. You can create new checkboxes to indicate that someone came to your gala or volunteered, but those checkboxes seem to get out of control pretty quickly.
If you're just doing individual donors, eTapestry is fine, but you should compare the UI and price to other smaller options. If you want to also track programs, volunteers or grants, you should check out Salesforce.com, which I consider to be a much better fit for most organizations.
Read Anna Hazel Crotty's full review
Brooke Hunter profile photo
August 08, 2014

User Review: "eTapestry-a good solution gone bad"

Brooke Hunter
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
My organization switched to eTapestry nearly five years ago. Right after we switched it was purchased by Blackbaud, the nonprofit database giant. I suspect Blackbaud just isn't investing in the product, though I don't know that for a fact. For a cloud-based solution, it has been updated rarely and just isn't keeping up with trends, nor has it over the last 4.5 years.

We selected the product to address the problem of staff storing contact records in multiple places. It has failed as a solution for that problem. We hoped to use it for event attendance tracking, but it has not worked out for that. We wanted to use it to track donation records and that is a place where it has succeeded. We also use it to email our email list.

We originally wanted this to be the database that the entire organization used to track contacts, but users found it clunky and so adoption was low. It is no longer being used by the entire organization and is now just used by 3-5 people who use it for contact tracking, mass emailing, and donation tracking.
  • eTapestry succeeds as a donation tracking system. You can easily enter donation records and can report on those records.
  • The mass email part of eTapestry works and has decent reporting capabilities. It's forms are outdated and the email editor is clunky, so most users accustomed to more current tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact will find it frustrating.
  • The main problem with eTapestry is that it lags in keeping up with current competitors. It feels outdated and abandoned. The user interface is terrible, which leads to constant complaints from staff. None of the actions are intuitive, so users feel like they have to search for minutes to figure out how to do the most basic things. People started using other software for the same functions eTapestry provides, which has left us with multiple email lists in different places, and a file that has duplicates, triplicates, or worse. We are going to be leaving eTapestry because of these problems.
  • There is no integration with social media. Competing products have moved ahead and are making social media a part of all of their contact profiles, but I don't believe eTapestry offers any kind of social media appending.
  • There is inadequate unpaid training. The training modules offered are expensive, and staff have not been happy with them in the past. Since the software is not very intuitive, there is an increased need for training. This puts us in a bind.
  • They are slow to respond to concerns. I've been sending out warning signals that we were considering leaving for years, and it has taken up to a year to get a response to a bad review that they solicited themselves. My concerns about areas where they are lagging behind competition have been brushed over. There are some important things they need to address that are not even on their radar. The mobile site is terrible and they are uninterested in streamlining mobile login.
  • The site is slow. When you are updating records, the site should be speedier. This is not a browser issue-this is based on years of experience on multiple browsers and multiple computers. Mass emails can take up to 24 hours to be delivered.
It used to be a good option for those who couldn't afford Raiser's Edge. I no longer think that is true.

There are so many new products being developed that it just isn't competitive any more. We will be moving to NationBuilder. I would recommend doing research on sites like this one and at NTEN, as well as Wikipedia-there are some good software comparison charts there to get started on evaluating what will work for our needs.
Read Brooke Hunter's full review
Karly Wood profile photo
August 13, 2014

User Review: "Churches love eTapestry!"

Karly Wood
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Our organization utilizes eTapestry to manage all members and donors for our church. Currently, our entire organization uses the system to track families, relationships, giving and trends, and correspondence. It assists us in keeping updated and relevant data on our church body.
  • eTapestry makes it easy to enter and connect family members. This is important to us so that we can reach out to the appropriate people for events.
  • eTapestry has a variety of reporting options which assist us in gleaning data we need quickly.
  • eTapestry's management menu makes it easy to add additional users and get them up and running on the system. This is integral in getting the system broadly used and managed by a variety of ministry department heads.
  • It is not easy to manage pledge giving. If a donor gives on a recurring schedule through automatic credit card transitions, it is impossible to categorize the gift as a payment. I have to go into the transaction, reverse it, and then recreate the gift as a payment to count against the pledge.
  • The dashboard reports are not diverse enough. They often misrepresent data, especially by counting pledges made as "gifts received".
  • It is difficult to create your own reports if the standard reports do not represent the data you need.
I would say eTapestry is great for small to midsize non-profit organizations. Because payments and gifts need to be entered by hand, it would be cumbersome for a large organization to use this program. The main issue here is the number of "clicks" it takes to even get to the "add gift" screen. There is no "one click" option.
Read Karly Wood's full review
Arkady Litvak profile photo
August 01, 2014

"eTapestry - an honest review"

Arkady Litvak
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry was used to process donations and to manage donor data.
  • It's a great entry-level donor data system for small nonprofits. It's a great alternative to more generalized small-scale database products like Access and FileMaker Pro.
  • It allows for easy searching of donor data.
  • It provides an easy way to export donor data for mailing lists, financial reports, etc.
  • It's a very simple system so it doesn't allow for tracking more complex types of giving like split gifts.
  • The data entry options are limited and only so many fields can be created.
The key question is your budget, how much you raise per year, and the skill level of those who will be using it. It's a an option worth considering for nonprofits who can't spend more than ~$2,000/yr on a system, who raise less than $500,000/yr., and who don't have seasoned donor database staff.
Read Arkady Litvak's full review
Abby Henkel profile photo
July 30, 2014

Review: "eTapestry offers everything we could ask for, and more"

Abby Henkel
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use eTapestry in the Development department. It's a very powerful tool that helps us keep track of complex and extensive donor information, pull reports with all sorts of data types, and manage correspondence to an extensive donor list. It helps us ensure that information is accurate, that we contact people on time, that our accounting is 100% accurate, and that we meet our fundraising goals. We also use the online product sales feature for fundraising campaigns involving peer-to-peer fundraising and selling promotional items.
  • eTapestry's correspondence functions are amazing. We can rely on its powerful reporting functions to pull accurate lists for things like pledge payments, thank-you letters, lapsed pledges, and all sorts of other campaigns.
  • The online training functions are so helpful. You can study at your own pace and go as deep as you want, because just about every function is covered in great detail. It also makes training easier, because the supervisor doesn't have to explain everything whenever we hire a new staff member.
  • eTapestry support is thorough, timely, and friendly. They've helped us solve many problems. My favorite part is that they can look into your account to see what you need to do. If I'm trying to pull a report and I know it's not working right, a support person can see how I've set up the report and can explain, all via online chat, what I need to change to get what I'm looking for. They must be experts in the software.
  • The interface could be modernized a bit, but it's really not that bad at all.
  • When it exports a long batch of letters to Word, everything is in table format and it takes a bit longer to perfect the formatting just the way I like it.
  • I really can't think of anything else. We regularly have chats about how great eTapestry is.
I've never used another product, so I can't speak to that. It's such a powerful tool that I think any organization with a small to large donor base could use it. The only ones that might not find it powerful enough are national nonprofits with huge numbers of donors to sort through and organized in more sophisticated ways. But we have several thousand donors with many records for each one, and have no trouble keeping track of all of the details.
Read Abby Henkel's full review
Sonja Nelson profile photo
August 17, 2014

eTapestry Review: "eTap - tap into professionalism"

Sonja Nelson
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry was used to track donations to our Benevolent Care Fund, our Benefit Gala, memorial gifts, and any other donations. It was used by our Stewardship Manager and I was the person to input the donations and generate the letters.
  • Generates professional acknowledgement letters
  • Easy to learn
  • Defaults make multiple entries easier
  • I had difficulty running reports, but it may be because our Corporate Office didn't give me permission. Or, that I didn't use that feature much at all, so it could be my own lack of experience in that aspect.
It was very well suited to enter and track donations.
Read Sonja Nelson's full review
Robin Dienel profile photo
August 11, 2014

eTapestry Review: "So so."

Robin Dienel
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We used it to email our supporters about different events and fundraisers our organization was having.
  • Email segmentation
  • Email creation
  • Analytics
  • Templates
  • Ecommerce
  • Minimizing all the tabs
I'm not sure.
Read Robin Dienel's full review
No photo available
December 09, 2015

eTapestry Review: "Somewhat effective, depending on your needs"

Verified User
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use eTapestry to maintain a database of our contacts (about 30,000) and send them newsletters with updates on our work, notify them of events, ask for donations, etc. It is not being used across the organization, but rather by a handful of people in communications and finance. We use it mostly to keep track of our constituents, especially as many of our employees do a lot of networking at conferences, etc.
  • The ability to have multiple users who can navigate the site and once and use it for different things.
  • The availability of online tutorials is helpful.
  • Easy to use templates, once they are designed.
  • Much of it is counter intuitive -- for instance, the whole process of creating UDFs and storing them can be very complicated, and the menus in which they appear are not straightforward either. It doesn't feel like the program understands that it would be most helpful to keep the most used tools available in menus, etc., instead of having to go search for them deep down in lists full of UDFs.
  • The forms that have to be filled to create accounts have a lot of extraneous info that leads to the possibility of a lot of duplicates, bad accounts, etc. Too much info!
  • Not enough of a filter for creating duplicates -- I think the requirements to make an account should be more strict and the filter should be better for duplicates.
eTapestry is well suited to very large orgs which have money to spend and don't mind wasting some money on people who don't open emails, etc. It is less appropriate for smaller scale organizations, I think, since they usually have less money and won't necessarily be using the fundraising functionality very much.
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No photo available
December 08, 2015

Review: "eTapestry for Use in a Small Non-Profit Organization"

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We used eTapestry as a CRM to manage our relationships - donors, volunteers and those who contribute to our organization in-kind. We managed approaches within eTapestry (such as person-to-person connections and/or annual appeal), we managed campaigns (such as the direct mail campaign or #GivingTuesday) and we kept a profile of key stakeholders using the note functionality. We also integrated eTapestry as the online giving platform of our website and managed all acknowledgments an end of year tax letters.
  • Automated acknowledgments from online donations.
  • Manage constituents and keep profile of key stakeholders.
  • Cloud-based tool that is accessible from any location.
  • Cumbersome reporting tools.
  • Too many steps to generate a solid mailing list.
  • Lack of integration with accounting software is unfortunate.
eTapestry is well suited for an organization who has a full-time development team who can manage the CRM on a day-to-day basis. It is not suited for use by a top-level executive who does not have the time to manage it on a day-to-day basis.
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No photo available
March 18, 2015

User Review: "Two Years of eTapestry"

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry is used to record all donations that are received by our non-profit organization. It is a way to log constituents and donations in an organized and efficient way. It is also used so that we have another record of donations, aside from accounting.
  • eTapestry has a strong customer service team that will give you step by step instructions if you are struggling with any processes.
  • eTapestry has potential to better its thank you options. I would love to be able to auto populate thank yous in a fast and user-friendly way.
  • The look of eTapestry could be improved, I think that a re-design my be helpful to simplify the website and draw customers in as it is not very inviting at this time.
  • I would like to see an easier way to create queries and run reports. eTapestry does have an excellent support team but I would like to see a more intuitive site.
  • I see room for improvement in compatibility with other donation sites and programs.
It is manageable and affordable for smaller organizations but I don't necessarily think that eTapestry is the best fit for larger organizations with thousands of donors as I imagine it would have limited functionality for their needs.
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August 15, 2014

eTapestry Review: "The Good, Bad, and Ugly"

Verified User
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry was being used only by the Development department. It housed all of our donor contact information, in addition to, donations, volunteer hours, pledges, and monthly gifts. Aside from individual donors, it housed organization gifts as well and grants.
  • Capture donor information
  • Track donations
  • Track if an individual is a donor and/or volunteer.
  • End user customizations of fields/page layouts
  • More detailed reporting
  • Fund/Source code capabilities.
It is well suited for the small nonprofit looking to track a small set of data. For a larger organization, that has multi-channel fundraising - it is not appropriate. It is not good for those that partake in direct mail, telemarketing, plus email marketing. I would be sure that the organization knows it's 5 year strategic plan prior to purchasing a database.
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August 06, 2014

eTapestry Review: "Gets the job done, for some"

Verified User
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
eTapestry was primarily used to manage donor contacts and track charitable gifts to my organization. All employees referenced eTapestry in that respect. It also was used by a smaller number of employees to track recurring memberships, annual solicitation reminders and event attendees. Finally, one employee used the product to occasionally reconcile with our bookkeeping software.
  • eTapestry's "User defined fields" offered quite a bit of flexibility. I was able to create database structures customized to the needs of my organization.
  • The query and reporting system was fairly easy to use. It required training for employed but they eventually got it.
  • The chat support is excellent. This is the strongest feature. Chat and phone support made a huge difference.
  • eTapestry hasn't received any major modifications since shortly after its purchase by Blackbaud. I do not see it as a well supported platform with a long term future.
  • eTapestry has always been weak in event management and moves management. The moves management module was sorely lacking and event management did not exist.
  • The biggest challenge our staff faced was reporting. After years of working with the platform, I still don't think our executives were getting satisfactory reporting. I was an expert at eTapestry and felt very confident manipulating the reporting and query structure but I was the only one. That skill left when I left. It involved memorizing dozens of rules and tricks that allowed a user to get accurate data to answer a given question.
There is a certain size of organization that is well suited to this product. For straightforward donor and gift management, eTapestry is leagues better than an access database at an accessible cost. As an organization grows and requires management and reporting for things like capital campaigns, large scale events, peer-to-peer fundraising, recurring memberships, it would be imperative to lean heavily on the "User Defined Fields" capabilities. That opens an organization up to more user error and some pretty complicated reporting.

Anyone shopping for a donor database needs to understand that there is no perfect solution. You are looking for the best intersection of price, ease-of-use and functionality. During the selection process, I would survey the types of operation you need a database to manage and determine if eTapestry has modules that fit your needs. If there is no module, you will have to build that functionality in User Defined Fields (UDF). I would dedicate an employee or employees to learn not just how to input data but how to manipulate reports, queries and UDFs. I felt this program needed a designated architect to manage data. I would also consider the number of records. eTapestry is better suited for less than 10,000 records as I believe the value vs functionality declines considerably as the records increase. If you have 10,000+ donor records, you likely need a more sophisticated solution anyway.

Basically, you get what you pay for with eTapestry. I would recommend it to an organization that is moving away from excel or access data tracking or a simple organization that doesn't do several different things. If you have memberships and multiple events and peer-to-peer, I think you will find eTapestry lacking.
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eTapestry Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (49)
6.7
Likelihood to Renew (16)
8.0
Usability (4)
8.9
Availability (2)
7.8
Performance (1)
6.0
Support (5)
9.9
In-Person Training (1)
8.0
Online Training (1)
8.0
Implementation (1)
8.0
Product Scalability (1)
1.0

About eTapestry

eTapestry® is designed to help small and growing nonprofits achieve better fundraising results. The vendor says this solution includes a new design and innovative features as well as an analytics suite that enables users to harness the power of data and boost fundraising efforts.
Categories:  Nonprofit Fundraising,  Nonprofit CRM

eTapestry Competitors

eTapestry Technical Details

Operating Systems: Unspecified
Mobile Application:No