Relationship management

Much like expectations or bosses, relationships, it seems, must be managed. That's the implication I see of using so-called relationship management software when dealing with large numbers of donors. When a relationship consists principally of hitting "send" every now and then, however, is it really a relationship?

Our household is facing a similar issue with Infinite Campus (IC), the Web site that serves as an electronic grade book for teachers -- and allows parents to peek in 24/7. Report cards as a feedback mechanism were always imperfect because they reported on the past; by the time you got them it was too late to intervene and correct any problems. IC is a huge leap forward in that parents and teachers can be literally on the same page, watching day by day as assignments get turned in (or not) and how grades are stacking up.

But in an apparent effort to keep teachers as well as students honest, IC can be quite unforgiving as an accountability mechanism. Once a due date is input, it is set in metaphorical stone. If a teacher is late inputting grades, everyone fails until the grade appears. As parents, what do we make of that F? Is it truly an F, or a clerical error? Those are very different problems, with very different solutions, but IC leaves us clueless as to which is which.

Which brings us to the relationship part. If IC is working (and being worked) correctly, it can enhance the parent-teacher relationship by allowing us to keep the heck away and let the teachers do their work. When IC sows confusion, on the other hand, we need to call or e-mail the teacher. We all know teachers are overworked, but think of it this way: Having 150 students is like having 150 direct reports. Add in parents, and you're talking about 450-ish direct reports (a few less if you've got lots of single parents, a few more if you've got lots of step-families). Can you imagine being an effective manager with 450 direct reports? Can you imagine filling in their semiannual evaluations, let alone maintaining truly healthy relationships with them? No way.

Yet that's what we force teachers to do. It's no wonder, then, that, like development officers, they'd love to outsource part of the hard work of maintaining relationships to technology.

Human frailty plus technological rigidity makes for a bad combo, alas. Precisely because relationship management software makes it possible to create separate messages for, say, major donors and lapsed donors, it's more-or-less inevitable that eventually someone's going to make a whoops and the major donors get an e-mail intended for the lapsed donors while the lapsed donors get one intended for the major donors. Similarly IC, which is supposed to provide clarity, does the opposite when the humans can't be as efficient as the software demands. In an instant, mistrust takes over, and relationship repair must begin.