School on Wheels

School on Wheels Uses eTapestry to Quintuple Its Database in Just Five Years

Indianapolis’ School on Wheels seeks to enhance and enrich educational opportunities for school-aged homeless children. Its vision is to break the cycle of homelessness through education. School on Wheels provides free tutoring services and educational advocacy; engages homeless parents in the educational success of their children; provides resources to adequately prepare homeless children for college; links homeless children with the appropriate services that will pay for their college degrees; and develops strategic educational and financial partnerships, as well as public awareness, that enables the organization to enhance additional educational opportunities for the children it serves.

The Challenge:
School on Wheels used Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets to manage its data, but staff could not query for mailings to board members, corporations, foundations, etc. Further compounding the problem was the fact that different spreadsheets were kept across the organization and there was no visibility into the data, its accuracy, or the overall well-being of School on Wheels.

The Solution:
More than five years ago, a board member introduced the organization to eTapestry, and as a small organization, School on Wheels began using the free “under 500” database (the very first offering in the eTapestry family). Since then, the organization’s database has grown to 2,500 records and staff now uses eTapestry’s Mass Email, eCommerce, Web 2.0, and Executive Reports modules.

School on Wheels has benefited from having all its data in one place, as well as organization-wide visibility into all its campaigns and donors. Whereas they operated with no online transaction capability before, staff can now perform email and direct mail campaigns using the ecommerce page as a means for collecting and tracking funds safely and securely. All the money collected via the website is automatically tracked in eTapestry’s integrated database.

The Results:
Staff recently completed a successful online fundraising campaign, raising $30,000 in just one month! They also used the solution to process auction items at the organization’s recent gala, which raised more than $40,000. (For this event, staff used Web 2.0 to manage online giving, which was a huge success.)

The mass email module has also helped generate more awareness around the organization’s mission. Staff have performed several email campaigns, since the Mass Email module is easy to use and provides ample reports on how many emails were opened, what the click-through rates were, etc.