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Make-A-Wish cuts processing time with eTapestry

While on the phone with a grateful donor, Sherrie, a radio request-a-thon volunteer, quickly typed the donor's request into the "comments" section of her Web-based form.

The caller was the mother of a child whose wish was granted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Indiana in 1997. Her son died two weeks after his wish was granted.

Not only did the mother want to donate $15 a month, but she also wanted to take her story to the radio air waves to motivate others to call in during the final hours of the annual Make-A-Wish Foundation Request-A-Thon.

Sherrie's comment from the mother instantly came up on the screen of another volunteer monitoring comments for song requests and challenges. The volunteer passed the information on to the Z99.5 deejay who called the mother and asked her to talk about her son on-air. She did with an outpouring of emotion that caused phone lines to light up.

That instant connection is a result of three types of communication-the telephone, the radio and the Internet-working in tandem—for the nonprofit's maximum benefit.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation got a glimpse of how well all three could work together when it first introduced its Web-based donor management system, eTapestry, to the request-a-thon volunteer pool in 2002.

That year, donors took down callers’ information on paper and handed it to another Make-A-Wish Foundation employee to run the donation through the credit card processor. Another employee entered the information into eTapestry.

"It was stressful, because the pace of donations always seemed to exceed the pace at which we could process the information, meaning tallying the total, running credit card donations manually, and inputting the donor’s information into our database," said Matt Ferch, Make-A-Wish director of public relations. "To have that streamlined not only made it easier and more accurate, but it made it a whole lot more fun. We could hang out and interact more with volunteers, the Wish families and radio staff."

After adding eTapestry's e-commerce module this year, the request-a-thon has been able to reduce the time it takes to process donations by at least half and fulfilled 40 wishes with the $216,741 it received in pledges. Make-A-Wish processed more than 1,900 donations in real time.

The fundraising event saved time because volunteers entered the donor information directly into the e-commerce form. Once they were done, credit card information was automatically processed and stored in eTapestry's database.

Volunteers manned the phones in an area known as the bullpen where about 10 desks, computers and phones were squeezed into a lively space decorated with photos of the children they were helping. A floor-to-ceiling tally, which included the child’s name and a wish description, recorded how much money they had raised and the number of wishes that will be granted.

As volunteers were talking to donors, they entered their name, address and payment information into eTapestry.

"What's nice about this is that we hit submit and it processes the order," said Robert Auman, a volunteer who has coordinated the request-a-thon's phone bullpen for five years.

Credit card and check transactions are completed while the caller is still on the phone.

"It's so easy to use," said Dana Zukanovich, a volunteer from Purdue University's Chi Omega sorority. "It takes less than five minutes to make a donation and I only received about five minutes of training to learn how to use eTapestry."

eTapestry has helped the foundation cut onsite staff time for the request-a-thon in half, Auman said.

"News from Tallyland," shouted Scott Sands, Z99.5 station manager, into a microphone set up in the bullpen to carry live commentary. Sands heralded the donation that put the tally over $165,345, granting the 30th wish of the request-a-thon to Logan, who wants to go to Disneyland.

Before eTapestry kept a running automatic tally, volunteers would keep interim totals by adding up the sheets volunteers filled out after they took donations, Auman said.

"I think we were even surprised at how smoothly it went," said Josh Esslinger, eTapestry e-commerce and Web developer who was on-hand for tech support. "It was neat to see their reaction about the amount of work eTapestry took off their shoulders."

eTapestry's e-commerce module can be added for a one-time set-up fee and an additional 10 percent of a nonprofit's base fee.