Story Image:

Virtual offices take on new meanings

Leslie Folkerth doesn't let a little water stand between her and her ability to delve into the donor database of Delta Sigma Phi, a century-old fraternity that began at the City College of New York.

Folkerth's floating office—aboard a 32-foot Nordic Tug—consists of a PDA, printer and a laptop equipped with a powerful Internet air card that allows her to grab an Internet connection about 95 percent of the time.

Vistas from the Hudson River, Erie Canal, Oswego Canal and Trent Severn Canal serve as real-life desktop wallpaper as she navigates her workload while savoring the sights of the Great Loop, a continuous waterway through the Atlantic Seaboard, across the Great Lakes, through the inland rivers, and around the Gulf of Mexico.

Folkerth's consistent Internet connection keeps her in touch with eTapestry, which holds the fraternity's Web-based donor database, and allows her to pull queries and answer the questions of her colleagues, many of whom are communicating from their virtual offices.

Folkerth's boss at Charitable Partners, a consulting firm that handles Delta Sigma Phi's fundraising, agreed to allow her to work 10 hours a week while taking her year-long cruise of the Great Loop. Instead of working from her Florida office with colleagues in North Carolina, California and Michigan, she would be in transit most of the time.

"I looked at my job responsibilities and tried to figure out what I could do easily while traveling and what would be inconvenient, such as getting to post offices for annual fund mailings," Folkerth said. "I've found that working on the boat is not a whole lot different from the home office, only not as convenient."

Although she's using the Internet at Wi-Fi speeds, which are slower than her home high-speed cable connection, Folkerth said the connections are still fast enough to help her get her work completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Folkerth's colleague, Randy Peterson, also leverages technology using eTapestry, but while experiencing a different mode of transportation.

Peterson spends a huge amount of his time in airplanes and airports while commuting across the country to visit prospective donors for Delta Sigma Phi. When eTapestry Mobile debuted in 2006, allowing customers to access their databases via PDA, Peterson dropped his four-pound laptop from his carry-on luggage.

"It gives me peace of mind knowing that I can access the most important information about our organization—which is our database—through my PDA seven days a week, 24 hours a day," Peterson said.

Peterson, who is on the road two or three weeks a month, said he always uses this PDA to access Delta Sigma Phi's database in eTapestry and check on giving history and contact information. He also uses eTapestry's integration with MapQuest to find directions to his contacts' locations.

eTapestry Mobile is especially helpful when checking on last-minute information entered into the database just before a visit with a prospective donor, Peterson said. He's often found that these last-minute donation entries give him clues on how large of a donation his prospect might make.

"I think eTapestry is a wonderful tool for people who are out on the road traveling to raise money for their organization," Peterson said. "It's one of the best tools that's been available in my 10 years of development work. It gives you everything you need."

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. Nonprofit organizations of all types and sizes using eTapestry.com 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.