GiftWorks Volunteer Center Delay June 20, 2006

We've been working on GiftWorks Volunteer Center for 4 months. It's a big project, and we're doing it in phases to make sure we can serve most of our customers in a timely manner. But we've blown past our second expected release date, and I apologize for this. Because it's my fault--I can point to the day I caused the delay, and that is disappointing, but we're learning from it and I promise we'll continue to do our best.

We expect to go to beta in the next week, but I've told the team not to rush it; at this point, it needs to be great, not just good.  I shifted resources to handle the rapid growth (including recipients of the $1 million software donation program through TechSoup). But we're working hard on it and will have it out soon (early July).

You might remember we delayed the release of GiftWorks 2006 last August for 4 weeks. That was my call--I felt the software needed more work, and I was right. The delay cost us some sales, but in the end we released a better product and customers were better served by the decision. We followed that up with an update within 6 weeks to refine a few things, and since then we've updated the software 2 additional times as part of our usual quest for great software. I think we set the bar pretty high.

This time, the issue is resources as we grow. We're growing from 7 last summer to 12 this past winter to 17 now and 23 in 6 weeks, at which point we'll be set for a while. In the future, I will be more careful about advance announcements. i hope you understand, and I hope you like the result--the software is pretty cool. Check out Chris Walker's blog to see some of it.

Now back to the drawing board--literally! (feel free to vent under Comments below--I do read them!)