Cooperstock Software and Software4Nonprofits.com are owned and operated by Dan Cooperstock.
Note: Cooperstock Software is the legal name of the business, while Software4Nonprofits.com is the name of this web site. Both names are in general used interchangeably on this site.
Who is Dan Cooperstock?
Dan is a computer programmer with an M.Sc. in Computer Science and over 25 years working experience.
Dan is also a Quaker, and has been both Treasurer and Clerk (chair) of his Quaker Meeting's Finance Committee, and Clerk of the Canada-wide Quaker organization's Finance Committee. Based both on this experience, and his experience writing and supporting DONATION since 1999, Dan has a solid understanding of the financial requirements of a small charitable organization.
Dan wrote the original DOS version of the DONATION program in 1994 when his Quaker Meeting was using a commercial donation-tracking package, and he observed several drawbacks of it. He also was not able to get the improvements he requested made. He talked to people that were using other packages, and none of them were completely satisfied. He decided that he would write his own program to handle donations, because he knew he could depend on its quality, and he could put in whatever improvements he wanted.
In 1998, Dan rewrote DONATION as a Windows program, and started giving it away for free (and later also accepting voluntary contributions) on the www.FreeDonationSoftware.org web site. It was initially free for a few reasons. The first was out of a desire to help other charitable organizations with part of their work, without costing them any additional money. Another was that Dan just didn't want the bother of getting into a sideline business as well as his full-time job, and it was satisfaction enough to have his work used and appreciated.
In 2007, Dan took time off of his paid work to begin another complete rewrite of DONATION in order to use newer and better-known technology, and add a lot of long-requested features. During this time, Dan came to the conclusion that he could best serve the charitable sector by working full-time on DONATION, and thus he decided to start charging affordable prices for it so that he could afford to do so. As part of that change, the domain name was changed from FreeDonationSoftware.org to Software4Nonprofits.com.
If you are further interested in the work Dan does on DONATION, and what it entails, you can read a couple of articles he wrote about it. One article talks about his thoughts at the time he was writing about why DONATION should not be open source. The other talks about his experience running a one-person software "company" (although primary non-profit), and the various roles he has to play in doing so. These articles were published on a weblog site for micro-ISVs (one-person or very small Independent Software Vendors). At the time they were written, the program was still free.
You can see more information about Dan, including recommendations, both from DONATION users and people he has worked with at previous full-time jobs, on LinkedIn.com, a social networking site for business.
DONATION has also been mentioned in the following web-based articles or web
sites:
Focus
on Nonprofit Software: Integration, Implementation and Intrinsic Value, an
article by Scott H. Cytron on
AccountingSoftware411.com
Charities Changed by Technology, a United Press International article by Andrew
Damstedt from August 16, 2005.
On page 3 of the PDF file for the February, 2001 issue of
Equip, a
newsletter for congregations of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
