J2EE™ Technology in Practice: Building Business Applications With the Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition

7.4. Opportunity: The Business Problem

Today, there are more than one million nonprofit organizations in the U.S. Accounting for $650 billion in proceeds, the nonprofit sector ranks as the third largest industry in the U.S. Yet, like many sectors, in raw numbers the overwhelming majority of nonprofit groups are small to midsize organizations. In many cases, they rely in whole or in part on volunteer labor, and are therefore rarely capable of implementing or maintaining IT systems beyond a few stand-alone personal computers. The result is that most nonprofits are left to manage funds manually.

eTapestry entered the market to provide solutions to charitable groups that could not afford their own systems. Thanks to the reach of the Internet, eTapestry ...