About Silent Partner

Silent Partner is here to serve development staff, by offering superb software tools and technical support in the area of contact management and fundraising development.

The Silent Partner originated nearly 20 years ago as a custom software package for a non-profit counselling agency. Doug Chaffee started the company in 1990 following two previous careers, the first as a university instructor and the second as a professional photographer. Doug is extensively involved in the charitable sector, presently chairing of the board of one non-profit and sitting on the board of another, as well as that of his church.

Doug feels that his previous involvement in business has enabled him to better understand the way less technically-oriented users experience computer software, and thereby helped him to design the Silent Partner with an accessible, intuitive user interface.

His involvement with non-profits has helped him to view the software from the perspective of a user, and not just that of a software developer.

Vision

Our vision is to continue to develop new features for the Silent Partner fundraising software while still advancing our existing features. We will offer these features in a cost effective, intuitively integrated, user friendly and manageable package. We want to be sure that our software is working in a way that users enjoy, understand and get what they need out of the program.

Values

We think it’s important to share with you what we value in a working relationship. These values guide us in our company decision making and help to ensure we remain on the right path to deliver on our promises.

  • We value relationships and the ongoing dialogue between our software users and our company.
  • We value integrity and will create software tools that are reliable, dependable, high quality and economical.
  • We value stewardship of time and money, meaning that we want to create software that doesn’t waste users’ time, and that makes them feel that their investment in our product and technical support has been worthwhile.
  • We value ensuring customers get a product that matches their needs. If we think The Silent Partner is not the best fit for a potential client we will state this upfront.

History

The original Silent Partner was developed in 1990-91 to meet the needs of a local non-profit counselling agency, which (among other needs) required the ability to track separately donations to its various branches. Subsequently it also proved to be a good fit for many other charitable agencies, and its installed base increased steadily. The transition from DOS-based to Windows was made in 1989-90. Throughout the nearly two decades of its existence, the Silent Partner has steadily improved in its capabilities and its ease of use. While it was originally developed in Canada, the Silent Partner has sufficient flexibility built in that it is also in use in the US and several overseas countries.