Her name is Lindsay Conwell and she is a Trojan with degrees in political science and psychology, a former political fundraiser, and the co-founder of a political fundraising software company called iDONATEpro.

With about 15 minutes before my next meeting, Lindsay quickly pulled out her Mac and opened up iDONATEpro. She explained that when she started her own political fundraising business, she was unable to find a product to manage her data, so she hired her now business partner, Forrest Howell, to create a one. Lindsay was quickly blown away by the features that Forrest added, and Forrest was blown away that the market was without a product like so many he had developed for corporations and nonprofit organizations. The two sought to create a solution.

Lindsay showed me the single space where one would enter and update information for all of their clients. Then she started to fly through everything that was being created behind the scenes. She pulled call sheets, call lists, briefing papers, event reports, name badges, place cards, and donation reports. She checked on the progress of bundlers. She imported lists, pointed out and merged duplicates. She ran finds for criteria every which way to Sunday, exclaiming that clients are always amazed by the number of new targets they have at their fingertips once their data is organized in one place. "How would they have known?! I would guess that 95% of the political fundraisers I talk to work off Excel."

Impressed by this cool new tool – available on a PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and any smart phone – I cut to the chase. "Okay. Tell me about your pricing," I said. Lindsay gave me a monthly subscription fee comparable to a cell phone bill or gym membership. I said, "You want everyone on this, don’t you?" Lindsay, who now lives in San Diego, smiled and said, "There’s no reason for anyone in the business to spend their nights and weekends doing what this just DOES. Yes, I want everyone on this."