“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”
Yogi Berra
A few weeks ago, I bought a pair of smart speakers for my office.
The goal was simple: background music. A little ambient vibe while I worked. Nothing fancy—just music that made the room feel like it had its act together.
Unfortunately, the setup spiral that followed was so unnecessarily complex, I briefly considered just humming to myself indefinitely.
There were multiple apps involved.
One for the speaker, one for the music service, and one that somehow already needed a software update.
The speaker kept asking me questions.
“Assign to a room?” Sure.
“Link voice profile?” Fine.
“Would you like to optimize for spatial audio?”
Spatial audio? This felt a bit presumptuous, considering we hadn’t even gotten regular audio working yet.
By the end of it, the speakers were technically online. Music was technically playing. But it was echoing softly from the hallway, through a different speaker I didn’t realize I’d activated.
And somehow, even though I was the one who set them up…I was no longer in control.
It shouldn’t feel this hard
Honestly? That’s what a lot of fundraising tech feels like right now.
We’ve got tools. We’ve got dashboards. We’ve got more donor data than anyone knows what to do with. And yet, somehow, it still feels harder than it should be to raise money and stay sane.
I hear it in all kinds of ways:
“Our data’s everywhere, but we still end up making gut decisions.”
“We’re collecting great info, but connecting the dots feels impossible.”
“I honestly don’t even trust our data most days. It always feels a little incomplete.”
These are real challenges—the kind that impact both the big picture and the day-to-day. And they serve as an important reminder: the work is too important to keep stitching together disconnected tools that weren’t built to support the whole.
What if the problem isn’t you?
If you’ve ever looked around and thought, “Maybe I’m the one doing it wrong”—you’re not alone.
Fundraising might not be broken—but it can sure feel that way sometimes.
And it’s not hard to see why.
The intention is good: give fundraisers better information so they can make better decisions. But the reality is often a maze of disconnected tools, dozens of dashboards, and enough segmentation logic to make a statistician cry.
I’ve talked to so many fundraisers who feel like they’re doing everything right—pulling reports, building lists, trying to make the tools work together—and yet still asking, “Why do I still feel stuck?”
Not because they’re not doing enough. But because the tools keep surfacing more and more stuff… without surfacing a clear path forward.
The promise vs the reality
You’ve seen the language — in product pages, sales decks, and onboarding emails: Targeted. Personalized. Automated. Optimized. Data-driven. AI-powered. 😵💫😵💫😵💫
At a certain point, it all starts to sound like noise. (And honestly? If you’ve read our site, you’ll spot those terms here too.)
It’s a great promise—and on a slide deck, it looks effortless.
But in the real world? Getting from where you are to that magical, optimized future often feels impossible.
Disconnected platforms. Overlapping features.
Tools that were meant to simplify things—but sometimes just shift the complexity around.
So even with all the “right” tools in place, it can still feel hard to make real progress.
And that shows up in the day-to-day:
- Emails that use someone’s name, but still feel like a stranger wrote them.
- Campaigns that take three platforms to launch—and still go out late.
- Dashboards that surface insights, but not priorities.
- Follow-ups that technically happen, but don’t really land.
This isn’t about doing things wrong.
It’s about doing too much, with too little support.
It’s that most tools weren’t designed to carry the weight fundraisers are asked to hold.
And when that’s the gap, it’s not just frustrating. It’s exhausting.
This is the shift
But what if there was a system designed to carry the weight?
Not a tool that makes more noise.
Not another inbox of insights.
But something built by people who’ve sat in the fundraiser’s seat—and knew there had to be a better way to do this.
Avid isn’t just fundraising software that uses AI.
It’s shaped by how real fundraising actually happens.
It’s been informed by 8,000+ experiments, 650 million donor interactions, and the very real day-to-day of teams trying to hit goals, grow relationships, and do more with less.
It doesn’t replace fundraisers.
It backs them up.
It doesn’t promise magic.
It delivers momentum.
It helps you see clearly, act quickly, and launch campaigns that are ready when you are—across email, ads, web, and more.
Avid helps in the ways that actually matter.
And that can change everything about how you work.
For the better.
Here’s what Avid actually does
Avid was built because we saw what fundraisers were up against: tech that gave them more to manage, not more to move with.
So we flipped the order.
Instead of surfacing more data, Avid surfaces the next move.
Instead of giving you blank slates, it gives you ready-to-run campaigns—tailored to your donors, your goals, your timing.
It connects your tools.
It syncs your data.
It identifies the highest-impact opportunities—then builds the emails, ads, and assets to reach them.
All you have to do is hit launch.
Or make a tweak.
Or maybe—for the first time in a long time—actually take a day off without wondering what’s falling through the cracks.
The way tech should feel
Fundraising is already hard work.
The tools shouldn’t make it harder.
They should help you get to the good part faster—the part where you know what matters, who to reach, and what to say.
That’s the system we’re building with Avid: One that supports your strategy, not just your storage. One that helps you focus less on managing workflows and more on making meaningful progress.
If you’ve ever stared at a dashboard and thought, “Now what?”…you’re not alone.
You just haven’t met Avid yet.
👇 See the system in action
