LifeLine Story

In 1986 Linda, the director of a children and family center in Burlington, Vermont, was talking with Barry, from Straight Forward Software, about the difficult time she was having finding an affordable donor management system. As the discussion progressed, these two agreed that if Linda could define what she needed the system to do then Straight Forward Software, a company that specialized in creating custom database systems for corporate America, would volunteer programming time to create a system that would meet her needs.

After several months of initial development the system was running smoothly. Linda, who happened to be on the board of some other local nonprofits and had friends on still more, suggested that those organizations really needed the system too. However, a few minor "additions" would be needed. "No problem!" Barry said. Straight Forward Software could do it.

Several more months of development, bug fixing, and attempts to shrink the never ending "wish list" and five local groups were thrilled with the results. In fact, they were so thrilled that they assured Barry that they had friends in other small organizations who could use the software. And they would pay for it!

Time to write a manual, package it all up, and see if anyone was interested. Oh, and a name would be helpful too. And an on-line help system would be nice! And how about...

By 1990 all the pieces were completed and packaged. Several more local organizations became users, and that was the start of LifeLine Version 1. In late 1990 the decision was made to implement as many of the "wish list" features as could be added and introduce version 2 with a national marketing campaign. By October 1991 LifeLine Version 2 was ready and the first national advertising began in February 1992. LifeLine Version 3 was release in April 1993. In June 1994 LifeLine Version 4 was released followed by the release of LifeLine Version 5 in December 1996.

April 2001 marked the release of LifeLine 2001, a full Windows version of LifeLine, with more features, more speed, and more power than ever dreamed of in 1986. More "wish list" ideas were integrated into the system and users loved it.

LifeLine 2003 began shipping in October 2002 with more features, increased speed, and further addressed the needs of our users.  

LifeLine 8 began shipping in January 2006.   This next generation of LifeLine has again added more features, new reports, and further addressed the needs of our users.  

As the LifeLine user base continues to grow our programmers continue to take ideas and suggestions for the next release. With each new version more user "wish list" suggestions are incorporated into the system, keeping LifeLine of the cutting edge of what nonprofit users need.