A letter about Fay

Every organization that gathers an audience ends up holding the same scattered record: a ticket export here, a sign-up sheet there, a cash box, a shoebox, and a memory that belongs to whoever has been around longest. None of it answers the plainest question the work turns on, which is who came back.

Fay exists to answer that question every morning. It is one book of your audience. Import what the box office gives you, record the gifts as they arrive, log the conversations you were having anyway, and Fay does the tending: it matches new rows to the people you already know, notices who is new and who is quietly drifting, and puts a short list of the right next gestures in front of you before the coffee goes cold.

There are systems that do all of this and a hundred things besides, built for hospital wings and university campaigns. That abundance is exactly what makes them wrong for a choir with one paid half-timer. Fay is finishable on purpose: learnable in one afternoon by one busy person, and priced so a bake sale covers it.

It is kept by a few promises. It is built slowly, and nothing is added because a competitor shipped it; every feature must stay learnable in an afternoon or it stays out. Your audience is never the product: no trackers, no advertising, nothing you store here is sold, and all of it leaves with you as CSV on any day you ask. And mail to [email protected] is read by a person, who usually answers within the business day.

The rest is better shown than described. The garden gate is open.