What is Kindred rOS?
KindredrOS is the relational (r) Operating (O) System (S) for human-centered fundraising.
Go take a quick peak at kindredros.com.
Ever notice that fundraising almost never breaks down at the point of caring? Every fundraiser I know cares DEEPLY.
It breaks down a few steps later, in the gap between what somebody knows about a person and what they can find at the moment it matters.
I sit with a lot of development teams. Not one has ever told me they stopped caring. What they tell me is quieter than that. They can name the supporter they have been meaning to call for six weeks. They know which family could give very differently in three years if anyone had an unhurried afternoon with them. They know who is owed a thank-you that never went out.
None of it is written anywhere a second person could read it.
So Monday does not hand you your list. It hands you the eight or nine names your memory offers, and the rest quietly become people you used to know.
That is not a caring problem. It is a carrying problem, and the difference matters enormously.
Care can be real and still outgrow the way it is being carried. Nobody chooses the week that happens. The list gets longer, the relationships get more layered, and what worked at eighty names cannot hold four hundred. You are not failing at this. What you built to carry this work was built when the list was small.
Where KindredrOS Came From
This did not begin as software. It began in two decades of fundraising and a spreadsheet, because a spreadsheet was what there was.
The practice was plain. Read each person through four things you can honestly answer. Then sort the whole list, and let the sorted order decide who gets a personal visit, who gets a letter and a phone call, and who gets invited into a gathering. Not who you like most. Not who you have been quietly avoiding.
More than $75 million has been raised using C.A.R.E.™ I mention the number once, and only because it means this was tested on real lists long before it was a screen.
What KindredrOS Is, In One Breath
Kindred rOS is where that practice lives now.
Two spaces, because a relationship changes the day somebody says yes. The Path is for people who have not yet given, and it asks what the wisest next invitation would be. The Pool is for people who already give, and it asks what care this relationship needs now. The two do not share one logic, and that separation is deliberate.
Who We Built It For
The shop of one or two people carrying all of it. The fundraiser inside a large organization who sits on a team of thirty and still holds two hundred relationships alone. The support raiser working a long list of names and a great deal of hope. The consultant holding several of these at once.
The care you carry was never the problem. The container was.
The C.A.R.E.™ lens
Four readings, and not one of them asks you to guess. Capacity is an honest estimate of what might fit somebody's season. Attributes is five plain questions about the person. Relationship is six questions about what has actually passed between you. Engagement is one level, from unaware through to advocate. You supply the readings. The sort does the weighing.
Try This Tuesday
Write down the five people you would be most upset to lose. Beside each one, write a single sentence you know about them that nobody else in your organization knows. Then read those five sentences back, and notice that until this moment they existed nowhere but inside you.
That is where the work begins.
Keep up the good work of C.A.R.E.™-ing for donors. It really does matter!
Kevin Eastway
More on why we built it: why Kindred.
Three things:
- Check out the website kindredros.com and follow us on social media platforms
- Share this newsletter with a friend who might need some C.A.R.E.™
- Book a Demo Call with Kevin, a 30-minute test drive over Zoom