eTapestry Works Like a Champ!
Updated September 16, 2022
eTapestry Works Like a Champ!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud eTapestry
We use eTapestry to track our donors, corporate sponsors, funders, and the donations we receive from these groups. I run reports for our executive team to show campaign results, board contributions, grants received, grant status, and donor trends. We also use it for our DIY forms to process online donations to our organization. We also use the Blackbaud Merchants Services and receive a Disbursement Report as to the number and amounts of donations made by credit card.
Pros
- Enables smaller organizations to have a comprehensive database that easily runs queries and reports.
- Allows organizations to accept credit cards at a lower merchant rate without having to use additional platforms such as Paypal or Stripe.
- Donors can be tagged to identify their interests or roles with the organization: ex. Board member, volunteer, golfer, auction donor, event sponsor, etc.
Cons
- Tracking incoming grant processes: award letter received, reports due, sign contract.
- Integrating eTapestry Communications with Canva would be nice.
- Training classes that don't start at 5am on the West Coast.
- Gift reports: no longer have to do them manually on spreadsheets.
- Tracking board pledges is easier.
- Queries and creating reports are easy and Blackbaud has Live Chat for when users get stuck.
- We use gift reports as our deposit receipts. This used to be done manually on excel spreadsheets which caused double, sometimes triple, data entry. This has not cut the reporting/deposit process in half to allow me to help in other areas of the office.
- Tracking the pledges of our annual board contributions is easier and more accurate. Year-end receipts for our directors' donations can be easily run and mail merged.
- Switching to Blackbaud's merchant services has saved us money.
I actually like using Raiser's Edge better and have used it at other organizations. But this package is very expensive. These are for the $10M and up organizations. eTapestry is a very adequate tool for smaller organizations due to its price point. It has many of the same features as RE. You can query just about any data field. Reports are easy to run. You can do mass emails to constituents. RE has a few more bells and whistles like Event Tracking, Table Assignments, Tribute/Honor gift tracking, Grant Tracking, and Peer-to-Peer fundraising.
Do you think Blackbaud eTapestry delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Blackbaud eTapestry's feature set?
Yes
Did Blackbaud eTapestry live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Blackbaud eTapestry go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Blackbaud eTapestry again?
Yes
Using Blackbaud eTapestry
9 - Executive Director, Director of Programs, Director of Public Art, Marketing Manager, Office & Development Manager, Development Associate, Teaching Artist, (2) Public Art Associates.
2 - The Office & Development Manager maintains eTapestry. She has worked with Raiser's Edge and eTapestry with other organizations and has approximately 5 years of experience with Blackbaud products. She is the one who did the research of 4 different companies and presented the information, making her recommendation to purchase eTapestry. The Executive Director has intermediate skills with databases and serves as back up when the Office & Development Manager is out of the office.
- Keeping an accurate log of all our constituents, their contact information and their donations
- Tracking board contributions.
- Reports on giving trends and campaign results
- DIY forms giving us the ability to receive donations via credit cards
- The ability to communicate with our constituents through mass emails
- Tracking of incoming grants. We log award letters as pledges so we can see what is coming in. Deadlines on applications and final reports are logged as calendar items in the journal. Reports have been set up to see what we have coming up in the next 60 days.
- Gift queries and reports have been created to serve as deposit records for our accountant.
- Ticketing for events.
- Newsletters
Evaluating Blackbaud eTapestry and Competitors
Yes - Keela - a very simple CRM software platform. We replaced it because it was very difficult to pull queries and reports. All reports were canned. Could not query on every field.
- Price
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
The Office & Development Manager had 4 years of experience with eTapestry and 4 years of experience with Raisers Edge. She was able to hit the ground running once we purchased it. She was the main liaison with Blackbaud to do the migration.
We wouldn't. We chose 4 companies to look at. We did product demos of each one. Met with each of their sales, tech and migration reps. Did side by side comparisons. Looked at pricing and how it pertained to our budget. The biggest factor in our decision is that we had an experienced user of Blackbaud products that could do the migration, use the product on day one and train others to use it as well.
Blackbaud eTapestry Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Yes - It was two years ago, but I'll try to remember. Blackbaud sent us an Implementation Workbook to prepare us for the migration. It had lists of training videos to watch prior to the actual implementation. It explained the forms Blackbaud asked us to fill in (Excel spreadsheets with headers) with our donor information. We downloaded everything from our old CRM and put the information into the forms Blackbaud sent us. They uploaded it into eTapestry. We were then given a list of tests to do with the new system to make sure our information was appearing as we needed it. I remember it being a smooth process and it was done within the given time frame.
Change management was minimal - The only thing we needed to change was a couple of processes with our subcontracted accountant. Mostly just reports we sent to her would look different.
- We could not migrate our email communications and newsletter templates.
Blackbaud eTapestry Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
We did not. Budget constraints, but the Live Chat has been sufficient so far.
Blackbaud provides exceptional support every time I call/chat with them. If they can't resolve my issue right away, they call back or email in a timely manner. I've never had to call to follow up. They always beat me to the punch.
Using Blackbaud eTapestry
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- "Can you tell me how much I've donated this year?" Easy to pull up information when I'm on the phone.
- "How much have we received from our board members?" Once dynamic queries/reports are created, it is just a couple of clicks to get information.
- Auto receipts for credit card donations saves so much time from doing acknowledgements.
- Compound queries are still a little difficult for me but Live Chat is a huge help.
Yes, but I don't use it
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