New Blackbaud eTapestry Early Adopter Volunteers Wanted!

Mike Rusche

We are excited to announce that we are officially seeking volunteers to participate in a new Blackbaud eTapestry Early Adopter Program (EAP) focused on helping organizations like yours offset some or all of your Blackbaud Merchant Services payment processing costs for online donations!Hello eTapestry community!

We are excited to announce that we are officially seeking volunteers to participate in a new Blackbaud eTapestry Early Adopter Program (EAP) focused on helping organizations like yours offset some or all of your Blackbaud Merchant Services payment processing costs for online donations! If you are currently using or getting ready to use eTapestry’s DIY, Advanced Donation forms or shopping cart, then please read on and let us know if you’re interested.

What is the program?
If selected to participate in this EAP, you will be among the first eTapestry customers to use and benefit from this new functionality that can offset some or all your Blackbaud Merchant Services processing costs for online donations. We have thoroughly tested this functionality internally and sought feedback from many organizations like yours along the way to make sure it hits the mark. At Blackbaud we believe it’s imperative to get first-hand feedback about the overall feature once we deem it ready to use, and that’s exactly what this program is for.

They say, with great power comes great responsibility and while we are excited to share this new and exciting feature with you, by participating in this program we’re also expecting some things from you. Our EAPs come with an expectation that you’ll actively participate and provide feedback on a weekly basis. You may be asked to go out of your way to tell us what you’re thinking, or perhaps even reach out to one of your donors to help simulate an activity that may only occur sporadically in real life.

When will it happen?
We anticipate this EAP starting on the heels of our bbcon virtual conference and running from October 18 –into January 2022. We do understand that is a busy time of year for many of you, but we are excited to get some feedback on this feature set as quickly as possible so that we can (hopefully) get it into ALL eTapestry organizations hands. Please do consider your expected capacity and availability through end of year before volunteering. Missing a day or a week during the program is totally fine and at the end of the year we totally expect that will happen. We just ask that you provide as much feedback as possible during the EAP program.

How do I get involved?
The first step is to fill out this survey if you and your organization are interested in participating in the EAP. We’ll review all responses and reach out to you if we think your organization is a good fit based on what we need for this program. Please don’t be offended if you’re not selected – it's not personal! Space in these programs is limited and we need to make sure we get feedback from a wide variety of organization to make sure we consider all angles before releasing this feature more widely.

Details at-a-glance:

• You’ll use a feature that will eliminate some of your BBMS payment processing costs
• We’ll help you make subtle changes to the “donor experience” on some of your forms
• Expect the program to run October 18, 2021 – January 2022.
• After the program you can choose whether to keep using the feature (as is) or not
• Expect to invest up to one hour per week to complete possible tasks we may ask you to do and provide feedback

We appreciate your interest and being an eTapestry customer.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me at mike.rusche@blackbaud.com