eTapestry

KRWG public media endeavors to facilitate New Mexico State University outreach by providing public radio and television services to southern New Mexico and West Texas. The public radio station, as well as the public television and web components, strives to engage community development by providing relevant news, a forum for open discussion, and a celebration of the arts, all while preserving and conveying a shared sense of human and natural history.

Challenge

KRWG FM was using an old public broadcast fundraising solution. The solution was run by a very small company and offered little support.

KRWG FM was missing insurance in backup, data security, and support from their fundraising solution. The provider had a small staff, so support calls were rarely resolved in a timely fashion.

The station suffered from poor quality of data: Many of the donor database records were outdated and redundant. Their first computer-based fundraising system did not offer helpful reporting tools and required non-intuitive, manual entry of data.

With a limited staff at the station, time was extremely important, but many hours were lost on work that could not be systematized.

Solution

In 2001, KRWG FM selected eTapestry for their database and emailing solution.

eTapestry allows the station to systematize fundraising, track donations, and manage donors and prospects. The system is also able to grow along with the station.

eTapestry also assisted in providing significant data quality control and reporting for the station’s 6,900+ constituent records.

KRWG FM staff can now easily create mass emails based on constituents’ relationship with the station, by postal codes, top donors, and dollar ranges.

Results

Upon implementing eTapestry, the station immediately saw improvement in fundraising practices and results. In 2001, the station raised $193,000 - far exceeding amounts raised in previous years. In 2010, the station raised over $460,000 with help from eTapestry, making it a record year.

eTapestry not only helped the station to increase fundraising by over 300% in ten years, it has helped clean the station’s data and keep processes organized, while providing an easy-to-use system. Development staff spend less time entering data and more time communicating with supporters and raising awareness of the station’s mission.