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Northwest Children's Home depends on donor details to communicate

As director of marketing and development for Northwest Children's Home in northern Idaho, she wants her donors—many of whom have supported the residential treatment center for 30 years or more—to trust her with their dollars.

Skelton is not alone. Many nonprofit managers worldwide seek to develop more trusting relationships with donors living in an ever-skeptical world.

While the Edelman Annual Trust Barometer ranks non-governmental organizations as the most-trusted institutions in the United States, only a little more than half of the opinion leaders surveyed in 2005 said they trusted non-governmental organizations.

One way Skelton works to establish hard-earned trust is by providing donors with the most detailed and accurate information through eTapestry, her donor database management system.

"I think people expect nonprofits to be responsible," Skelton said. "The integrity of eTapestry's data is great, and this gives donors confidence that we know what we're doing."

Skelton has become so skilled at quickly retrieving data that often she calls up a name in eTapestry as she identifies the donor on her Caller ID. By the time she answers the phone and the donor is ready to ask her a specific question, she has pulled up the appropriate record and is prepared to answer.

Many residents in the Pacific Northwest have established a giving pattern with Skelton's nonprofit, which provides a therapeutic living environment for about 80 children at a time. Typically, the nonprofit received tributes and memorials in honor of those who have died. eTapestry allows Skelton to distinguish the tributes from other gifts.

While it was important for her organization with its two distant offices to purchase a Web-based system, eTapestry's attention to detail, especially a relationship feature that ties donors together, was one of two attributes that drew her to the system in 2002.

"eTapestry is a comprehensive system," Skelton said. "It has bells and whistles in being able to capture a lot of detail. That really sold me when looking at it."

With 10,000 donor records and an $8 million operating budget, that detail is paramount to helping Skelton recall key facts about her donors. Often, before meeting in-person with donors away from the office, Skelton said she uses her PDA and a wireless connection to access donor information in her eTapestry database.

Skelton will also research donors' histories before writing thank-you notes and reviews their cumulative giving record. While many of the nonprofits' donors give small donations, they donate every year and over many years.

"I like to show them the impact of their gifts to the children over time," Skelton said. "Because we have our data easily accessible in the system, we can truthfully report what they have given and for what. It's another way to illustrate that we are open and that we keep track of things."

In addition to eTapestry's detail, Skelton said her decision to choose eTapestry was also impacted by the way in which the system was created. Christie Love, wife of eTapestry CEO Jay Love, who runs an Indianapolis nonprofit, was instrumental in providing feedback on eTapestry's development.

"That struck a very deep note with me," Skelton said. "One of the founders of the company has nonprofit input and awareness. He lives his life every day with someone who knows what it's like to be in my shoes."

About eTapestry
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. eTapestry serves more than 5,000 nonprofit organizations of all types and sizes that 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.