Blackbaud eTapestry Reviews

Pros

eTapestry is a great entry-level CRM tool that will help you familiarize with how the whole concept works. My organization used eTapestry for quite some time and it functioned really well. I really enjoyed the Query Builder tool and folders to keep all your queries organized!

Cons

Once my organization started to grow more, we needed a tool that could handle the bigger volume.

Pros

Everything about this software is exactly what we need. We can communicate with our supporters in many ways, prepare and run queries on any field, create and use reporting features at any time and essentially document and track all donor information. This is all done with ease and offers flexibility.

Cons

We wish there were a few more features as it integrates with social media and email addresses. We have found that the accuracy is not as strong as we would like it to be.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Blackbaud eTapestry

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Blackbaud eTapestry

Pros

Automatically search for duplicate accounts when creating a new account.

Cons

Not easy to figure out how to run reports/queries, and need to pay couple thousands dollars a year to just learn how to use those features. In addition, new fees were added during our three-year contract that we have to pay.

Pros

We use etapestry and justgiving and have found it to be very useful. We have been able to easily link fundraising campaigns, event registration and forms to our website and then track information.

Cons

Extracting information can be somewhat challenging - once you learn their programing and how to create a query it becomes easier. They do provide a very large training database and a chat room for help.

Pros

I love the ease of functionality in finding and creating accounts. I like the connection with Blackbaud Merchant Services for an all in one platform.

Cons

The start-up was a little too long and delayed our business plan. Also, queries and forms are not necessarily intuitive.

Pros

It was easy to use and track giving and donors over time.

Cons

Grant tracking could be a little easier to navigate.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Blackbaud eTapestry

Pros

It worked for when I needed it to work. But my organization has now outgrown the system.

Cons

Cusomer support and outdated database. Not user friendly.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Not much. There aren't many pros that I have seen compared to other softwares.

Cons

The biggest problem with eTap is reports. Running the most basic of donor reports is incredibly unintuitive and convoluted.

Pros

I like that all of our data is stored in this software and that it is easy to quickly access for my whole team.

Cons

Sometimes the software gets bogged down with users and runs very slow. The updates do take some getting used to as well.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

I like the most the fact that one can search for a client's account by their account number, with a / before it, and find any given person within the account instantly. This sort of number-orientation makes the software much easier to integrate for importing data, especially when importing hundreds of account updates and journal entries at a time.

Cons

I like the least how slow the software is. Perhaps this is because my company is utilizing the maximum account storage (we have 100,000+ accounts on file). When clicking on someone's name, there is a loading time of 3-5 seconds. When attempting to enter a gift or a journal entry from that person, there are 2 additional loading buffers of 3-5 seconds depending on the activity within the company at that time. This severely slows our process of data entry, preventing data entry from being smooth and fast.

Pros

Data conversion from ResultsPlus was excellent. The specialist worked with us to make sure all the data was correct and matched or improved upon how it was organized. The process also helps you become familiar with the software. So, once completed, we were able to start using without much disruption.
We've been successfully using it for over a year. Overall, it is user-friendly, with great support. Our account manager is wonderful and helps with issues/questions; checks up from time to time. Online resources/tutorial great and help navigate some of the learning curves with reports, mailings, etc.

Cons

We got an odd impersonal e-mail with a link to view our invoice.It would be nice to be able to pull it up online via our Blackbaud Account Site. Support was slow when we had a question with invoice and not easy to manage/review.
Not the best for e-newsletters - it's a little clunky to design with limited templates. We stayed with Constant Contact, but there are good integration features with eTapestry.

Pros

It's cheap if you're a small non profit.

Cons

Blackbaud will sell you on products but won't deliver. Don't expect to get much out of eTap other than a headache

Pros

Ease-of-use was the best component of the system. When I was hired on by my organization in 2014, they had been using the system for a number of years already. People knew what tools they need in the system, but did not invest in further exploration of resources until I arrived. It was fairly intuitive though.

Cons

The pricing was based around Contacts/Accounts which was not good for us as we have had rapid growth. Moreover, at the time, it did not integrate well with other systems we were purchasing. Our goals was to build out a seem less network where our data flowed in a way that made sense from Accounting to Marketing. eTapestry would have left us with few options.

Pros

Flexibility of donor records is important and works well. Tagging donors in multiple different ways always our nonprofit to track and communicate in ways that are important to the donor.

Cons

Would like to see improvement in the communications features - templates are clunky to work with and designing own templates is challenging. We end up creating image in outside tool and then import it in.

Pros

It has a very comprehensive set of features.

Cons

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.

Pros

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!

Cons

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.

Pros

I cannot think of a single thing.

Cons

Everything.

Pros

eTapestry is an economical donor data base that is provided through Blackbaud systems. It is a great price for all the features and functions it has. It can store and track all data on donors both individual and grants.

Cons

While the software and database can track grants it is easier and more useful to track individual donors. Matching funds are a bit tricky to input and events are another feature which are a bit tedious and difficult to track.

Pros

Generating letters off of each donation. Being able to run queries. I like the address updates and a lot of the user defined fields.

Cons

Way too many layers/dynamics. Next to impossible to figure out many of the compound queries without help.

Pros

Etapestry is very user friendly, I was able to pick it up quickly without utilizing any of the training videos.

Cons

I wish there was a way around only being able to open one record at a time. Other web based data bases I've used have had the same issue of only being able to open one window at a time. Are there any web-based data bases that allow you to open more than one window at a time?

Pros

The customer support it used to have when we first started a couple of years ago. Now it seems as if no one knows much on chat.

Cons

The customer support on chat is terrible. All they do is send you links to read. They don't seem to understand.

Pros

We like the tiered permissions (security groups) function, which set this system apart from many other offerings in the donor management arena. The customer service has always been great when we've had problems. The reporting capabilities of eTapestry are absolutely incredible.

Cons

The software is not always intuitive, and it's only easy to use after lots of time has been spent learning its layout and functionalities.