Customers and Partners,
Today is my first day as the new CEO of Bonterra, and I’m filled with both excitement for the challenge and a deep sense of humility. As Bonterra customers, you do some of the most important work imaginable by making the world a better place through impact – social good, environmental good, and societal progress. My excitement comes from the opportunity Bonterra has to help you vastly expand your impact, while my humility comes from a recognition that we have a moral obligation to do just that.
I am a software geek at heart, working in technology for the last 30+ years and serving as CEO of software companies for the last 15. The companies and products I’ve been responsible for have done everything from keeping planes in the air to driving customer and employee experiences on the ground. I have a deep belief in the power of software to unlock and amplify the potential of people.
Yet, the real reason I’ve joined Bonterra goes well beyond my love of software. My wife, Coleen, is the Executive Director of a local non-profit in Austin called LEEF that supports educational equity within our public school district. I have had more than a few dinner table conversations about how remarkably difficult it is for non-profits to raise money and distribute resources.
Despite the availability of great individual tools, including the market-leading products offered by Bonterra, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the social good world lacks the kind of integrated, end-to-end solution that has helped transform the business processes of the ‘for-profit’ world.
Bonterra’s purpose is to help our customers measurably increase the impact of every dollar and hour invested in social good and, by virtue of doing so, expand the resources directed at impact. We will do this by making the flow from donation to impact more efficient, by helping donors and doers of good make better decisions and execute more effective programs, and by creating transparency and measurability so that impact can be better understood and more clearly communicated.
Over the next several weeks, I will be focused on getting a deeper understanding of the challenges our customers are facing, what our customers like about Bonterra, as well as what you don’t like and we need to improve on. I can imagine that the changes over the last couple of years – in ownership, leadership, and integration into Bonterra – also raises questions. I want to dive into all this deeply over my first 90 days.
Around the 90-day mark, I’ll schedule a series of customer webinars to outline what I heard from our customers and partners and share how we’ll translate that into a strategy to realize Bonterra’s purpose. We’re committed to focusing exclusively on your needs in the social good space. Over the coming months and years, we’ll deliver major transformation – through product innovation, services, and cross-product integration – that no other company can offer. The end result will be the leading platform not just for doing good, but measuring it and accelerating it beyond the capability of anything else on the market. I personally can’t wait to see the results you will achieve.
Thank you for being Bonterra customers, and I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible in the days and weeks to come.
Best,
Scott
