University YMCA

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

I started taking greater advantage of journal entries to track contacts and notes about my meetings and interactions with donors. We are also using journal entries to track correspondence and mailings sent to donors.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

It is invaluable to review journal entries when preparing to meet with someone. I can review past notes to refresh my memory on family member names, as well as recent news (births, anniversaries), trips they may have taken, awards they have won, or programs they volunteer with. Having access to this info deepens conversations with donors by allowing me to build on previous conversations. It is also invaluable to my successors and other staff who may have an interaction with that person. A word of caution — never put anything in a donor’s record that you would not want them to read! Use a donor’s record for details and tidbits of news — not to analyze them or share gossip.

Native Arts and Cultures Foundation

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

The flexibility of custom fields on journal entries and journal contacts.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

The way eTapestry’s journal contacts are set up allows us to track development actions, proposal deadlines, and major gift opportunities. These records keep us on track and organized with all of our information in one place.

We set up a variety of custom fields on journal contacts that help us with both our major gifts efforts and our grant-seeking. Our custom fields allow us to track grant proposals through every stage of the process, easily see what is outstanding or pending, and report on outcomes. We also use customized journal entry fields for moves management that feeds into a report on strategy and timing of next actions for major giving prospects.

Other advice for eTapestry users

If you’re new to eTapestry, I would highly recommend learning more about the way other nonprofits are modifying the system to meet their specific needs. Some custom functionality may not seem immediately obvious. Our current setup in eTapestry is nearly unrecognizable compared to our initial setup, and we are more comfortable and confident with our systems going forward. The standard structure of eTapestry belies some of its actual capabilities.

Fund for Teachers

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

The ability to pull reports for specific events using campaign and approach fields.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

We have a lot of different types of campaigns and events that happen at the same time, so being able to pull a detailed report that gives me information on one campaign or one event makes my life much easier. We use the campaign and approach fields to pull these reports.

At the end of every event or campaign, I pull this report for a few reasons. Number one, it is a good checks and balances against our accounting department’s information.  Number two, it is easier to look at the status of pledges. Number three, it makes writing and creating thank you letters less time consuming.

Other advice for eTapestry users

I try to update eTapestry as soon as a gift comes in; letting donations or information pile up and then entering it all at once can be stressful. It is best to knock it out as it comes in, if possible.

Harmony Project

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

The ability to track all donor data.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

eTapestry helps us keep track of all gifts and donor information. In a quick look, we can identify our history with a particular foundation or individual donor. When you have around 4,000 contacts it can really make a difference to have this in one place! It saves us a lot of time and also helps us verify if we are managing donor related tasks accurately.

We enter donors, gifts and other information daily. We also use eTapestry for grant management.

Other advice for eTapestry users

Keep it clean. Share an “eTapestry user guide” inside your organization so everyone who uses the database enters data with the same format.

University YMCA

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

One of the most valuable features we use is the “Create Journal Contact” feature. It creates a journal entry when a letter is processed in eTapestry.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

Previously, we were not using this feature so it was difficult to know who we had reached out to with appeal letters or invitations to donor events. But now we know who received thank you letters for their donations and who received different types of appeal letters and invitations to special events.

Now when we receive a donation through the mail in one of our remit envelopes, I can simply look in the journal for the appeal letter the donor received and easily mark the campaign it came from. Take advantage of this feature. It really makes it easy to see who in your database has been contacted through donation letters, thank you notes, invitations, and other special mailings.

A Nun’s Life Ministry

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

The approach field is our team’s favorite eTapestry feature. When we first started, we didn’t know exactly what the approach field was or how it could help. Now we can’t live without it!

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

The approach feature is an indispensable tool. It aids in our up front planning for a project, as well as evaluating progress along the way and at the completion of a project. We are able to see more clearly what approaches are working. We can even attach financial goals and the number of gifts to each approach to see our progress.

We recently had an online fundraiser for our ministry that spanned a few weeks and multiple online channels (website, social media, eNewsletter, livestreaming, etc.). We were able to use the approach field in concert with DIY forms and queries/reports to see which approach contributed significantly to our goals. During the fundraiser we adjusted our strategy to strengthen approaches that had lower performance and to build on those that had great performance.

Free Arts Minnesota

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

Campaign, approach, and goal reports on the eTapestry dashboard.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

The dashboard reports save our organization time and allow us to more thoroughly track our development progress. We are working on creating better processes for our campaigns and approaches in order to make the dashboard reports even more useful for our organization. By more clearly defining campaigns and approaches, we can more clearly define and track our goals in those areas.

Ronald McDonald House Charities of Spokane

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

The most valuable eTapestry feature is the ability to categorize donations by campaign, fund, and approach.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

In the past we’ve struggled to accurately assess which of our fundraising strategies were most effective. The reporting capabilities of eTapestry have allowed us to have accurate, powerful information at our fingertips.

We use the reporting tools to analyze the performance of each fundraising strategy (approach). We also have monthly reports that show us new donors and lapsed donors, which has greatly increased our donor engagement.

Other advice for eTapestry users

My biggest piece of advice is to invest time and resources upfront to set up your database according to your needs and to train your staff well.

The Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

The most valuable eTapestry feature is the ability to export donor info for communications lists.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

I use this feature every month for email blasts. It saves me time and keeps me organized.  Specifically, I use the email criteria in queries to find accounts with and without email addresses. We select the “field has no value” option for mailing lists and the “field has any value” for email lists. This query criteria helps me send communications to the right constituents.

Jewish Family Service of Metropolitan Detroit

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

I am often asked for donation amounts over specific periods of time. It’s a huge time saver to run a query preview to get total amounts without having to pull a full report.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

It takes just a few minutes to get this information from eTapestry, so I can pull it as soon as it’s needed and move on. Oftentimes, donors will ask how much they have donated that calendar year, or a staff member will need someone’s giving history to formulate future asks. The query preview saves time on these types of requests.

Other advice for eTapestry users

Be specific in tracking gifts. Everything that you enter, you should be able to pull a report on later.

Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

The standard top donor report and our custom membership reports are most valuable.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

It saves time, I can quickly find out who our top donors are with the standard report.  I can also find out how many members I have at each level along with how much has been raised for membership using our custom membership reports. I use these reports for special “members only” and “top donor” events.

Mount St. Mary Catholic High School

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

Pledge tracking and payment processing.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

Currently we are finishing up our first capital campaign! This makes the pledge tracking and automatic pledge payment processing critical to our efforts. We use pledge tracking to ensure we are always up-to-date with pledges and associated payments to our campaign. We added Sage as an integrated payment processor in eTapestry so we can have automatic pledge payments via credit card or EFT (checking account).

Other advice for eTapestry users

When setting up automatic pledge payments pick a specific day of the month (for example the first of each month) and try to schedule payments on that date. This makes automatic pledge payments easier to identify. We have automatic payments also setup for our annual fund so these are mixed in the automatic report we receive from eTapestry. The report does not indicate the fund the payment goes to so we must send notification to our business office letting them know how to apply the payments.

Freedom Service Dogs of America

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

At first, the most valuable eTapestry feature was consistent use of funds, campaigns, and approaches. At any given moment I can easily monitor progress toward our goals. Then, this year we developed a robust and easy-to-use major gift tracking system. Now, I can manage my major gift prospects easily and keep our major gift officers on course. We use both of these features to track progress and change course if needed.

Other advice for eTapestry users

One of the best ways to get the most from your eTapestry database is to ask peer organizations or frequent users how they use the database. Reach out to peer organizations, read eTapestry reviews, and connect with other eTapestry users.

Boys & Girls Clubs of Spokane County

What eTapestry feature is most valuable to you?

Relationships.

Why is that feature so valuable to your work?

Knowing who works where, who is related to whom, or which board member brought the account in significantly aids in building relationships between a donor and our organization. Subsequently, this also aids us in knowing why donations may drop off if that relationship is broken.

We are still working to implement this database wide, but our goal is to use this information in our day-to-day interactions and phone calls to donors. It will assist us in building our relationship with the donor.