Like many nonprofits, California-based African Conservancy recently joined the growing ranks of nonprofits enabling their Web sites to take donations online.

African Conservancy president and founder Corinne Waldenmayer reasoned that those who respond to an upcoming e-mail campaign might prefer to make their donations online with a credit card. As the time drew near for a large-scale campaign to continue the nonprofit's mission to preserve African wildlife and traditional cultures, Waldenmayer began to compare the online donation service she was using, which was free to set up, with others that more closely matched her organization's growing emphasis on fundraising.

"As long as I was not planning to have a lot of donations, my old service was fine," Waldenmayer said. But, she said, the 15 percent fees on donations that her former provider charged would not have been acceptable to donors if there were other, better alternatives.

Waldenmayer, who was already using eTapestry, a donor management system accessible via the Internet, began to investigate eTapestry's online donor services, which charges a flat rate to set up the Web page and establish a merchant account and a flat rate of $30 per month and 1.9 percent of the gift amount.

Because the donation information flowed automatically into her database and the gift page worked seamlessly with her Web site, eTapestry was an easy choice.

With another headquarters in Zambia and board members located on both American coasts, Waldenmayer, a former engineer, knew when she established African Conservancy less than one year ago that she would likely be working with an application service provider (ASP).

"It was important for us to access the software without installing it on everyone's desktop," she said. "ASPs work well for organizations with characteristics like mine. The minute you have an office in Italy and an office in New York and you want to share data, you better have someone who knows what they are doing handle your data or you're going to have a hard time."

eTapestry's low cost and lack of maintenance also appealed to Waldenmayer. "One of the things that traditional software companies tell you is what their software will cost you over a four-year period," Waldenmayer said. "They say it's a lot cheaper to buy your product, then you own it. But this does not take into account annual maintenance fees of $400 to $500 a year or the fact that after four or five years your system is obsolete."

Founded in 1999, Indianapolis-based eTapestry is the first Web-based donor database and communications management system that rents its software to customers who access it over the Internet. Nonprofit organizations of all types and sizes using eTapestry do not pay the large upfront purchasing costs or the ongoing maintenance and support contracts typically paid in the purchase of more traditional software.

For more information, go to www.etapestry.com.