I was hired at Neighborhood Healthcare 3 weeks before its largest fundraiser of the year. I needed to learn eTapestry quickly to accurately update the database with event purchases and I needed my data entry to be fast. Customer support was my go-to, they answered questions over their chat module, emailed me white papers on best practices, and shared detailed instructions on how to be most efficient with our database.

Customer service was fast, knowledgeable, and respectful. I never felt like I was asking a dumb question and they always had an answer.

Overall, it's a good program for the price we pay, but if it was any more we would change to a more user friendly system. The most important thing with eTap is to make sure that you have an employee who is familiar with database administration otherwise it is very easy within eTap for data to be misrepresented. In summary, if you don't have a big budget, it's a good way to get your feet off the ground, but I wouldn't look at it expecting a 5+ year/long term solution.

First of all the price for our organization is fantastic, after shopping around for a new database management system, we have found nothing close to what we are currently paying. eTap has decent functionality after you learn how to use it; once you master the basics, it has the flexibility to store just about any data that you need as long as you are willing to get a little creative in how you organize the data. The ability for the data base to be directly integrated into our website and Quickbooks is also a great feature that minimizes potential lost memberships and corrupted data.

The hands down most frustrating part of the program is that you can't have multiple tabs open within the same browser with eTap. In order to have eTap open on two different tabs, you must use a different web browser and a different login ID, which becomes a complete and total pain. It is also not the easiest program to learn and train new people on. Often we want volunteers to work on data management for us but that is really only possible if the volunteer or intern is with us for at least three months so we an spend the time training them on the program.

I have been working in communications and development for non-profit organizations for more than 15 years. I have been using eTapestry for 2 years. I have experience with a variety of other donor management tools including Blackbaud's The Raiser's Edge. eTapestry is strong in regard to contact management, processing online gifts, and the reporting/query tools. The expense as well as the email communications and analytics are where it falls short.

Entire system is very easy to learn no matter the experience level Managing donor records and online gifts is very easy Reporting and query tools are easy to use even for those without a lot of experience building queries clean, user-friendly interface excellent customer support simple data entry & gift processing online giving pages import gifts directly to database, helping teams avoid manual entry & the pages can be reskinned to match your website design easy to mass import records

expensive, especially having to pay for Advanced emails & paying an hourly fee for minor changes eTapestry support must be requested for an array of minor tweaks to giving pages for example and it usually takes several days to up to 2 weeks to get changes finished communications templates are inflexible and look extremely dated, often the preview of a communication you see on your screen is not how it looks at delivery, very limited analytics tools and delivery/testing options as far as I know there is no ability to export from eTapestry to QuickBooks which means gift processing team must reenter gifts manually into QuickBooks while it has the ability to provide personal fundraising pages, they are highly inflexible and the layouts look so dated they are almost not worth using

The eTapestry system is by far the best we've ever used. There are many things to like including: the dashboard with its sophisticated look that integrates all of the important information in on place, which makes it simple to focus on important things like delivering programs. Our old system didn't work well, especially when we needed to pull information from it. Reporting in eTapestry is quick and it looks really professional. So far, everyone we've had to provide information to, such as accountants, counselors, and so forth, are really impressed with how the information is presented to them. Last but not least, the diy forms are a godsend. They've raised us to a whole new level in regards to our tax receipting, registration forms, and mail outs! Perhaps the greatest thing we've enjoyed using eTapestry is the caliber of service we've received from every member of the team.

So far there's nothing we don't like, but I do have some suggestions. First of all, for the diy forms, we are using one for program registrations that have a fee - the donation form seemed to be the best fit. It would be ideal for us if we could either change the wording from "donation amount" and "donation frequency" to "payment amount" and "payment frequency", or provide us with the options for wording because we don't want those who are registering to be confused about the fee because it's not a donation. Secondly, in the diy forms, where we have multiple options for users to check off, it would be ideal if we could create columns so that the form isn't too long. Finally, because we are using some of the diy forms for program registrations and we deliver programs to families, it would be ideal for us if we could have a form where participants could put in the names of their family members and those names would generate separate constituents in the database. For instance, a mother signs up for a program with her two kids. All have the same contact information, but the health information is different for all three. Currently, people have to do the form several times - once for each family member.

The support team at eTapestry is very helpful and having live chat is great. eTapestry has freed so much of our time and helping streamline our processes.

Easy to create user defined fields to fit the needs of my organization. eTapestry is a great tool for volunteer tracking, event tracking, donation tracking, and in-Kind tracking. Having one tool for all of those categories is very helpful.

Queries and Reports are not the easiest to pull. I know that the queries can do so much more - but they are the hardest to manipulate to get the information needed for reporting purposes. Also - it would be nice to have some way to assign users their city specific donors. As we are in multiple cities - the user access is very limited. It is almost either they can see and do everything or not do anything. There needs to be more user categories. And as we expand to other cities - I don't feel like eTapestry grows enough with us.

If you are only dealing with donations, this may be a good option for you, but I work for a membership organization, and not long after I was hired, I convinced the organization to scrap eTapestry for something better suited to our needs.

This database is easy to use. If you've ever used another donor management system, you'll find it pretty intuitive. You can build decent queries and create tons of data points you want to track.

Everything has to be done manually, and it can take some time. I wouldn't recommend this to a membership organization because of the time involved logging renewals. There is also a really not so awesome template you have to use create all of the products you want to offer, including donations. It's a hassle for the organization and the donor.

It a good, basic tool for housing all of your client, customer or supporter contact information and activity.

Its an inexpensive way to manage donor and supporter activities. It also allow us to bulk email and communicate to our audience. We can design a nice email with graphics and it is fairly easy to set it up and send it out.

It is a little clunky in that the categories and drop-downs aren't customization. You basically have to get with your team (or those responsible for entering data) and decide how to use their established categories to fit the data you want to collect in order to have it be consistent for each person's information that you enter.

This was our first try with donation software and I tried it because it was free. But then we were tied to a 2-year contract and I hated it so much we switch to another platform and I still needed to pay for it. It was quite frustrating. The reports were the hardest part. Everything about the system just seemed to be more difficult than it needed to be.

It was initially free through TechSoup and we didn't have a software package so I thought we would try it.

The reports function was awful. I never did understand how to generate reports. It also was more technical than I had the aptitude for.

The software delivered what we needed it to and was sufficient for our requirements.

The ability to have recurring donors processed automatically and securly is very important and Etapestry delivered this. The program is able to track donations to specific projects and fundraising programs. Handles EOFY receipts well.

It was difficult sometimes to get the information you required out of the program without specific training.

It has a very comprehensive set of features.

More expensive than many of the newer packages. Not as easy to use as other packages. Requires expensive 3rd party software in order to integrate with Quickbooks.

Basic tools are easy to learn, especially as a first-time user. Saving attachments to records. Tracking soft credits; linking soft credits to hard credits. Ability to process credit cards and post directly in data records.

Many past development staff led to variations of historical data inputs--this is where the customization makes tasks difficult. Queries can only do AND and OR, so it can take multiple queries to get to the data needed. Can't delete accounts once a profile has been created. Can't undo merged accounts. Can't pull direct report on numbers of donor visits, donor gifts, etc (donor-focused data). Can't designate a special location for detailed donor visit reports (eTap account "Notes" isn't efficient).

We liked the software for a while but the more our business grew, the more eTapestry because a pain as the interface was very old and hard to use for people that aren't technology savvy.

The software had a lot going for it because it had all the bells and whistles that you want, including ability to find out someones net worth, donations at other places, etc. The plus side about it was that you could easily put someone into the system and instantly send them a thank you email without more than a few clicks.

It was very difficult to run reports as there were so many moving parts to get them to come together.

I have worked with several different non-profits, and there are a wide range of products available. In many cases, people fall back on Raiser's Edge or a similarly-sized software package because it's comfortable. However, in my current position, I was creating a development department from scratch for a small non-profit, and we simply didn't need that level of software, especially not with our limited budget. eTapestry, I find, provides absolutely everything I could need at an extremely afford price point. Gone are our days of tracking prospects, donors and campaigns in multiple spreadsheets - but we don't have the complicated and, frankly, overkill options of a high-end software that's needed for the likes of non-profit giants. It's immediately accessible to fundraising veterans and novices, with access to your information from anywhere that you can connect to the internet. Plus, it grows with you, with very well-priced tiers based on your number of records. I'm a huge advocate!

I think there is still work to be done on making customization a little more straightforward. For certain, there are challenges when it comes to split gifts, for example, that still need to worked out. That said, I have not used any software that is perfect out of the box or even after tinkering for weeks, for that matter. There is always some give and take, but I feel eTapestry does a great job.

eTapestry is probably suited for larger organizations and is much more than we need. There are a ton of reports available and it's easy to keep track of different campaigns. It also has excellent tools for event management, like tracking ticket sales, sending invites, etc.

I found the program a bit overwhelming to use as a new fundraiser who also worked by myself. If I had a team, or someone to train me it may have been a bit easier. It is not very intuitive. Also, the training videos are not included, which is a big negative since the program is so expensive to begin with. I did not find this program very simple for receipting donations as they came in with monthly receipts as well as year-end receipts. It was a tedious process. The customer support team was not very helpful. We ended up going in a different direction with our business.

eTapestry is very useful for even small non-profits in terms of moving donors through cycles of giving and being able to thank them appropriately and within a good timeframe.

For me, the best thing about eTapestry is being able to use it from anywhere and not worrying about site licenses or purchasing updates.

It can be quite hard to move data over into eTapestry due to a lack on intuitive functionality. However, the customer service is quite easy to use and they have been able to help me/my staff every time.

I can recommend - you have to decide and you management without a Lindsey

I like eTapestry but I have to confess that when I started at an organization using it I had the benefit of an assistant who knew the product inside and out and got me started almost immediately actively working with the software. It is intuitive so I only had to query my wonderful colleague, on occasion. I was excited at what was possible to accomplish (with some add-ons).

Again the confession: if I did not have rep on board would I have been able to be operating the system my first week. I had used similar products before and am not really a novice. I did reach out during that time to eTapestry for support but it was often slow enough that I figured everything out without their help