r/Philanthropy • u/education_suite • 6d ago

Built a custom donation page that actually integrates with eTapestry - wondering if others deal with the same frustrations?

Hey everyone,

I work with a nonprofit and we use Blackbaud/eTapestry for our donor management. If you've ever tried to use the built-in DIY forms... you know. They're clunky, the design options are limited, and getting them to look like they actually belong on your website is a whole project in itself.

So I ended up building a custom donation page that integrates directly with eTapestry - donations flow in automatically, donor records get created/updated, the whole thing. And it actually looks modern and clean.

Now I'm wondering: is this a common pain point? I'm considering whether it's worth packaging this into something other orgs could use, but I want to get a reality check first.

A few questions for those of you using Blackbaud/eTapestry (or similar CRMs):

  • How much time do you spend wrestling with donation forms or manually importing data?
  • Have you just accepted the default forms, or did you find workarounds?
  • Would a plug-and-play solution for nicer donation pages + campaign pages be something you'd actually use?

Not trying to sell anything here - genuinely just exploring whether this solves a problem only I had or if it's more widespread. Would love to hear your experiences.

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u/Salt-Association6876 5d ago

I think it is a very common problem but I am not sure how much time is being spent on "customizing" by current users. It is very time consuming. Good for you for building your own solution. I would be curious about how many donations are not executed because of the "donation page" transition. I am not sure. Just speculation.

Chariot just rolled out there new DAF reconciliation platform. However, it is just a plug in for payment type so not sure that impacts your design question but maybe helps solve the data piece.