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September 24, 1999/14 Tishri 5760, Vol. 52, No.4
Fund-raiser designs software
CHRIS GARIFO
Staff Writer
Diana V. Hoyt spent 24 years developing the tools she would need to be an effective volunteer and professional fund-raiser for various nonprofit agencies. Now she has developed and is marketing a computer tool that she believes will improve nonprofits' fund-raising efforts.
"If you cannot appropriately communicate with your donors, you cannot raise the funds you need," Hoyt says. "And in today's world, it has all got to be done by computer."
Hoyt designed Matchmaker 2000 from the ground up.
"I literally sat down with a stack of white paper and a lot of ideas about what I wanted the screens to look like, what interactions I wanted to take place, and just the concept, and literally laying out the screens so that when I sat down with the programmer, I could say, 'This is what I want the screens to look like and this is how I want it to evolve.' "
Once begun, the project began "to have a life of its own," she says, as she realized ways to improve the software and make it even more useful to consumers. "Once you start developing a software package, you never are done," she says.
A few years ago, the 54-year-old Hoyt says, she could barely turn on a computer.
Hoyt grew up in a traditional Methodist home in Hutchinson, Kan. She attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where she earned a degree in secondary education-mathematics. She converted to Judaism in 1967 after marrying a Jewish man. She also moved to Phoenix that same year and began a job teaching at Maryvale High School.
She divorced her first husband after seven years of marriage, then remarried another Jewish man and left teaching in 1975 to raise their two children. She later divorced again and, in 1994, married Robert Hoyt, who converted to Judaism to marry her and is now owner and president of Computer Support Group, which builds, maintains and networks computers and provides custom software.
"I have friends who kid me and say I've brought more Jews into the world than a lot of people," she says.
She first became involved in fund-raising during her second marriage as a volunteer for the United Jewish Appeal campaign. In 1985 and 1986, she was women's campaign chairperson.
Her first job as a professional fund-raiser was for the Arizona Museum of Science and Technology, now called the Arizona Science Center. Since then, she's had jobs as a fund-raiser and fund-raising consultant for a variety of nonprofits, most recently the Arizona Cactus Pine Girl Scout Council, and she has earned a master's degree in education from Arizona State University.
Hoyt acknowledges that Matchmaker 2000 sales have gotten off to a slow start (she's sold three packages so far, and has five to 10 prospects) but then the price is rather high, starting at $3,690 for the single-user version with training and one year of technical support. The software "is an investment, but it's an investment that should in its first year pay for itself," Hoyt says.
Her company, Heritage Designs, has one employee, Director of Operations Lisa Viggiano; one mission, marketing and training people to use MatchMaker 2000; and operates out of a suite of offices shared with Robert Hoyt's business. Hoyt says owning her own business has required a lot of adjustments, such as working seven days a week, with long hours on many of those days.
"That's been the roughest, but I've enjoyed it," she says.
Hoyt says she also finds fulfillment in knowing that her software may help raise the level of fund raising for some worthy causes.
"That's exciting, because if you raise the level of fund raising, that means an agency can fulfill more of its mission; it can serve more children, more elderly, more homeless people, and you can really have an impact."
For more information on MatchMaker 2000, visit the Web page at www.MatchMaker2000.com.
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