Nonprofit's international staff works well with Web-based system

Two years ago during a trip with her church to Russia, Anne Robertson was touched by Lena Zolkova, a quiet 14-year-old girl she met in an orphanage in Makariev, a half-day's drive from Moscow.

Anne and Lena developed a special connection and Anne became her sponsor through Children’s HopeChest, a Colorado-based Christian nonprofit dedicated to providing practical help to orphans around the world.

Today, Anne is able to keep up with Lena through letters that Lena sends her. She also learns other things about Lena's personality—the fact that she's responsible and friendly—through information stored in eTapestry, Children's HopeChest's Web-based donor management system.

Lena's caregivers in Russia attach photos of Lena in eTapestry that are e-mailed to Anne. She also receives yearly highlights about Lena—such as her progress at technical school.

Children's HopeChest provides a myriad of information to donors and sponsors, as well as information on its humanitarian aid, medical supplies and equipment donation, foster-care program, orphanage media centers, transitional homes for orphanage graduates, technical life-skills development program, computer training, and counseling programs for orphans and orphanage graduates.

Specifically, the nonprofit takes pains to track its business and individual sponsors and make sure they receive timely updates on their sponsored orphans and orphanages in Russia and Romania.

"We were doing everything with our sponsorship in the most archaic way possible," said Samantha Kerr, sponsorship coordinator for Children's HopeChest, about previous attempts to track this information. "I don’t even know why we were using a computer."

After a failed attempt at using an unfriendly online database, Children’s HopeChest began using eTapestry in September 2003.

"We were looking for something that was easy to understand, something that we could get information out of in an easy format, and something that we could customize," Kerr said.

"eTapestry has been the dream come true,” Kerr said. “Our overseas staff uses it. They don’t have the high-speed connection that we do, so it takes them longer to get information into it, but they can do it."

Children's HopeChest has a staff of 120, only 10 of whom are based in the United States.

"We were getting information from Russia and Romania in Word and Excel documents and piecing information together here and it was a paperwork nightmare," Kerr said. "If there were changes to make, it would take us forever to make them."

eTapestry is especially helpful in segregating general donors to Children's HopeChest and sponsorship programs.

"You can have a donor that is giving two sponsorships, as well as other programs, so maybe they’re giving $100 a month for one thing and $30 a month for something else," Kerr said. "In managing the information, we needed a database that could separate the information and allow us to get it out easily."

The nonprofit is beginning to make the distinctions in its marketing to these groups with the help of eTapestry.

"It's important because there's times we need to raise money for certain projects and we try to target sponsors for anything related to the kids and their orphanages," Kerr said.

Recently, for a back-to-school fundraiser, Children’s HopeChest sent appeals just to orphan sponsors. Of all Children's HopeChest's donors, the orphan sponsors are more likely to respond to such a fundraiser because they are more involved in the lives of the children. Another campaign to raise money for household and support items for young adults, who had left the orphanage to attend technical school, excluded sponsors and targeted those who had given previously to the nonprofit's graduate and general ministry programs.

In addition to tracking donors and information about the children, Kerr said the nonprofit uses eTapestry to track information about volunteers who travel to Russia with the nonprofit.

"eTapestry enables Children's HopeChest to be more efficient which directly impacts the ministry’s target audience," Kerr said. "Connecting sponsors to children, churches to orphanages, and donors to programs makes it possible for this organization to have an impact on more than 10,000 orphans in Eastern Europe."