Pasco Education Foundation

Pasco Education Foundation Turns to eTapestry® for Reporting and eCommerce Needs

Established in 1991 in Land O’Lakes, Florida, the Pasco Education Foundation’s mission is to provide opportunities for the community to help accomplish the goals of Pasco County’s public schools through personal involvement and financial support. Since its inception, many committed individuals, businesses, and organizations have contributed both time and money to support the Foundation’s work, enabling the Foundation to disburse more than $700,000 in creative teaching grants, scholarships, awards, and computers to the students and staff of the Pasco County school district. In addition, numerous in-kind materials and supplies, as well as volunteer hours, are donated by local businesses and civic-minded individuals and organizations.

The Challenge:
The Pasco Education Foundation was using Microsoft Excel® to manage donor information. Since the spreadsheets were only transaction-based and lacked reporting functionality, the organization had no idea how many donors it had in a given year – staff could only tell how many transactions had been completed in a given timeframe. Despite having more than 1,800 records, staff could not report to executives any specific information about the donors or donations that were its bread and butter. Also, the organization had a website but could not process online donations

The Solution:
Director of Development Allison Broihier learned about eTapestry while reading the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ technology survey. Based on the information and software options discussed, she knew that eTapestry would best fit the Pasco Education Foundation’s budget while meeting its reporting needs and providing a vital eCommerce solution for its website.

The Results:
Since purchasing eTapestry, The Pasco Education Foundation has been extremely happy with both the database offering and its reporting capabilities.  The eCommerce integration brought a complete redesign of the organization’s online donation page and provided the ability to manage several different events and ticket sales simultaneously.  “eCommerce gives us the ability to automate transactions and keep records on everything,” Broihier said.

Without having ever used eCommerce or online sales before, the staff was thrilled when the first event run using the new eCommerce functionality well surpassed the original goal: “We were really happy with event registrations and ticket sales as a result of the eCommerce page. We had a ton of success with this event and were able to pull queries that were dynamic, and I could report to the executive committee in a matter of minutes. We were expecting to sell 500 tickets, and we sold more than 1,000!” Broihier said.

Overall, the organization’s first event using eTapestry – Tampa Bay Raise Day – went so smoothly and was such a success that a second event has already been planned to continue the momentum from the first.