Memories (Digital and Otherwise)

I visited with a new client this morning and met with about a dozen people around a conference table, talking with them about work I'm going to be doing with their data.  Throughout the meeting, I stressed (as I so often do) the importance of understanding that your fundraising management software really needs to be considered your organization's institutional memory.  Everything your organization has learned, every interaction your organization has had, every gift your organization has received -- every everything -- should be recorded in your database, so that anyone looking at information about any person or organization can rely on the data to preserve the organization's memories.

I have been helping nonprofits make effective use of their software resources for over 25 years (let's be charitable and say that I was six when I started doing this work, okay?)  When I started, and for many years thereafter, I thought of the work as a way to marry the very personal work of fundraising with the very impersonal functionality of computers and software.  It wasn't until a few years ago that I had that lightbulb moment and realized that my work is about preserving memories.

More and more recently, I find myself realizing that my commitment to memory is not just connected to my work.  While I don't feel that I live in the past, I do like to recall it and keep it alive.  I happen to have a very good (perhaps near photographic) memory, so I have the blessing/curse of being able to remember a lot of things as though they just happened.

I'm telling you all of this so that it will make perfect sense to you when I tell that I've just published a book, called An Ordinary Man, and it's a memoir about my friendship with Edward Mellish and the many gifts I received as a result of that friendship.  I started writing this book about 14 years ago, jotting down memories in a Word document.  Some recent events caused me to pull back from my business a little and focus on finishing the book and getting it published.  I wanted to honor Edward, I wanted to give something to his two daughters, who were not quite two years old when he died in 1996, and I wanted to do it for Edward's wife Rosalie, who is my dearest friend and has been for nearly as long as I have been working with nonprofits.

But mostly, I want to remember.  I know that one day the memories will not be so readily available in my brain, and I don't want them lost forever.

Memories can be so many different things, can't they?  Digital memories can be knowledge and understanding, history and recognition.  Printed memories can be literal reminders to help us prevent bad things from happening again, or to help us understand how to repeat good thoughts or deeds.  Visual and other sensory memories can shock our systems and bring back feelings we thought overcome or forgotten.

There is no future without the past.  Memories preserve our past and allow us to grow and move forward.  Hearing or reading other people's memories, or protecting an organization's institutional memory -- these are building blocks for the future, and they connect us to one another.  They are part of our common humanity.

We cannot forget.


If you are interested in "An Ordinary Man" it is available at Amazon.com -- search for Cheryl J. Weissman and you will see the book along with (and I have no idea how this found its way to Amazon) an article a wrote in 1991 for a now-defunct fundraising magazine.