Argh. eTapestry drives me nuts.
I’ve used eTapestry as my donor database at two different organizations. It is, so far as I can tell, the best option for small non-profits. It is far more sophisticated than using Access and Excel. Yes, I have an Excel donor database available for purchasers of The Little Book of Gold, but honestly if you can afford to pay for a service like eTapestry, it’s far more powerful. If you have used Excel for a database, you know that while it may start out as being useful, after time it gets harder and harder to manage simply because of the amount of data you’re trying to store.
But for all its strengths, eTapestry still drives me crazy. It’s got so many bells and whistles it’s hard to do the very simple things I want to do with it. It’s got what I would call “feature clutter.” And it happens to often in software and web applications like this.
I’ll tell you right now: I want to launch my own service. Something with the 20 most common features non-profits need. Easy, friendly, and available to people to use without having to take a long training course (it’s hard to use eTapestry without taking one of their courses).
If I ever get it going, I’ll be sure to let you all know. Because it’s something that the non-profit world desperately needs. It would certainly make my own life infinitely easier.
Permalink: Posted at 4:52 pm, October 25, 2009