What If Donor C.A.R.E.™ Had a Place to Live
Where should donor relationship information live?
Care that lives everywhere tends to live nowhere in particular.
That has been the argument of these first eight weeks, and I want to close the arc somewhere gentler than a diagnosis. Not what is wrong. What it would feel like if this were solved.
None of those eight weeks was ever a verdict on the people doing the work. The care was never the part that failed.
Imagine the holiday
You take nine days off. Somebody covers the desk, and covering it actually means something, because the twelve relationships that need attention that week are visible with their next steps written in verbs and a name beside each one.
You come back and nothing went quiet. That is the whole fantasy, and it is a modest one.
Picture who those twelve are. The supporter who emailed in June and is still waiting on a straight answer. The family foundation whose thoughtful update went three weeks past due for no reason anybody could defend. The steady monthly giver who has never asked for a single thing and has earned more attention than she has ever been given.
Imagine the handover
Someone starts in March. By the end of her second week she can take a meeting with a family who has supported the work for eleven years, and she knows what they care about, what was promised in June, and what to avoid.
She did not get that from you over a long lunch. She got it from a record that somebody kept because keeping it took ninety seconds and mattered.
Nobody has to become the organization's memory for the organization to have one.
Imagine Monday
The question of who to contact today has an answer before you sit down, and the answer was not produced by whoever shouted. It came out of an order you set, from readings you supplied, and you can see exactly why each name sits where it does.
That is the difference between a system that decides and a system that shows its work.
Two spaces, because a yes changes things
The Approach holds people before a first gift, and it asks what the wisest next invitation would be. The Path begins after that first gift, and it asks what care this relationship needs now.
They do not share a logic, and that is deliberate. The day somebody gives, the sorting stops mattering for them and something else begins. In the product's own words, this does not end the relationship. It begins a new season of stewardship.
There is one more thing worth saying about the split. Fundraisers are often handed systems that treat a first gift as an arrival, when everybody who has done this work knows it is closer to a beginning.
Preparing an approach before a first gift is reasonable. Once someone has trusted you with a gift, the relationship has entered a different season. Two spaces keep that distinction clear.
Good intentions do not need more conviction. They need an address.
The C.A.R.E.™ lens
All five inputs exist so what you know can be held outside you: Monthly High Hope, Annual High Hope, Attributes, Relationship, and Engagement. Nothing in those inputs is a verdict on a human being. You supply what you honestly know. Kindred makes the order visible. The relational work remains yours, which is as it should be.
Try this Tuesday
Ask yourself one question and answer it honestly. If you left this role in six weeks, how much of what you know about your supporters would leave with you?
Whatever the answer, it is not a judgment on you. It is a description of where the knowledge currently lives.
If you would rather see this than read about it, the demo is thirty minutes over Zoom, with me, and there is nothing to prepare. Not because you need one more system to learn, but because the care you already carry deserves to be held somewhere other than one person's memory.
Next week the newsletter turns to the carrying problem itself, starting with what happens when the care has outgrown the system.
Keep up the good work of caring for people. It really does matter!
Kevin Eastway Founder and Principal, Kindred rOS
Three ways to stay connected:
- Subscribe to Fundraising from the Heart
- Follow Kindred rOS on LinkedIn
- Share this edition with a fundraiser who may need it