Software Solutions

There is a wealth of software resources for the nonprofit world.

PIDI - Public Interest Data, Inc.

Quoted directly from their website:

Public Interest Data Incorporated. That's our name. That's our mission.

Let's face it: The world is overrun with data. Credit cards, bank accounts, mailing lists, dot-coms everywhere. Direct mail is targeted to sell you everything — well, not everything, really, because they know something about you. They know what you want, what you like, what you care about. How do they know? Data. It’s the circulation system for the body of modern human society. Data is information and information is power. Power to sell, sure, but in the right hands, the power to change things for the better.

Public Interest Data Incorporated. We incorporate data into the service of the public good. We empower committed people to help make the world better. We do the heavy lifting of making your data work, so you can help lift your organization to new heights in fulfilling its mission.

Web sites like this always have a section for "frequently asked questions" — and we have one too — but to really understand PIDI, you have to start with an infrequently asked question: Why?

Michael MacLeod and Del Clark started PIDI in 1987 because they realized that data management was the weakest link in most nonprofit organizations. With Michael's background as a direct mail consultant for many nonprofit groups, he could see that most organizations — despite deep commitments to worthy causes — were struggling to make the most of their most valuable asset: their donor lists.

For nonprofits, choices were few. Huge, expensive, inflexible data warehouses could store their lists on mainframes. Or the database management functions could be brought in-house, along with a truckload of equipment, a team of programmers and a host of headaches. Or maybe just try to get by with generic "one size fits all" software packages and do the job on a shoestring. A digital dinosaur, a job security program for techno-wizards or a system held together with duct tape; not an appealing set of options for the women and men of the nonprofit sector dedicated to changing the world.

Well things are better now, thanks to a revolution in information technology and thanks also to some revolutionary ideas: That nonprofit causes deserve a responsive data management solution for a responsible cost. That you can work on the cutting edge without bleeding. That your data is the one absolutely irreplaceable asset for building deeper relationships with your community of donors. That your best solution for data management might just be a company that doesn't help people sell shoes or fast food or delivering magazines, but which lives and breathes every single day in the non-profit world.

We are Public Interest Data Incorporated. We get it.