One person, one job, one product.

I am Eric Lee. I run development and communications for a nonprofit in East Palo Alto. Before that I spent sixteen years in operations, most of it running multi-unit businesses where the difference between a good week and a bad one was whether anybody could see what was happening.

Hope Opens came out of the fundraising job, not out of a business plan. A donor would ask about giving shares, or mention a donor-advised fund, and I would have nothing to send them and no process to follow. The gift either took months or quietly went somewhere else. Nothing I could buy solved that without also wanting to hold the money, own the donor list, or replace a system we already had.

So I built the thing I needed: explain every way of giving properly, connect the donor to a person, and keep one honest record of where each conversation stands.