There are many ways that a three-member nonprofit staff covering 10 midwestern states can manage 1,200 volunteers.

But Christel Gollnick has found that one of the most effective is to use Web-based donor and communications software. Gollnick, executive director of Angel Flight Central, made that decision more than a year ago when choosing eTapestry to replace the organization's off-the-shelf database system.

"We wanted something that was Web-based, but we didn't want to spend a ton of money," Gollnick said. "I heard from people who were positive about the company. It's price and capabilities are unique."

Angel Flight Central needs effective and prompt communications with its volunteers, the majority of which provide their flight time and their planes to fly people who need transportation but can't afford it. Volunteers' planes were some of the first commercial planes in the air after 9-11. Some of the nonprofit's missions included flying special booties to the rescue dogs working at Ground Zero and reconnecting family members stranded after 9-11.

Angel Flight Central uses eTapestry to manage its volunteer and donor databases. The software tracks Angel Flight's volunteer interest areas, as well as its mailings and donor information.

"We needed something we could customize without putting it into somebody else's language," Gollnick said. "We wanted to pull information in and out as needed."

eTapestry allows her to track donations by zip code to give proper credit to each "WING," or volunteer area.

"If we have a WING with many missions and little money, we know we need to work on contacting donors in the area," Gollnick said. "We weren't able to do that at all before, in Access. It was just too complicated."

Tracking missions and dollars is especially important to Angel Flight Central because of its incredible growth in the past few years. Since 1999 when it flew 305 missions, the nonprofit has tripled its number of missions and volunteers.

eTapestry also will help the nonprofit with its first fundraising campaign. The effort to raise $3 million has begun with prospect lists-defined by priority and region-provided to individual board members for solicitation. Because of eTapestry's accessibility, board members will soon be allowed to look at their prospect information from within eTapestry.

eTapestry's remote accessibility was one of the key reasons Gollnick chose eTapestry.

"We have a lot of volunteers who are not pilots who help run the organization throughout our 10-state region," Gollnick said.

Angel Flight Central continues to receive help from a summer intern from Minnesota who worked in the nonprofit's Kansas office in the summer of 2002 and learned eTapestry with the other three staff members. Now, when she needs data entry work done, Gollnick calls her intern to make the additions from Minnesota.