Technology. You can't live without out, and sometimes, you can't live with it. Case in point: today, I've been reading email from many of our past and present donors reporting that, on Saturday, they received large numbers of testimonials by email, many of which were attached to applications that were funded more than two years ago!
I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize for the rapid-fire succession of 'testimonial' emails that many of our donors received over the weekend. With regard to these emails, please allow me to explain what happened:
This weekend, our hosting company performed some routine maintenance on our database server. As a result of that maintenance, at 1:30pm on Saturday, our system forwarded to our donors copies of every testimonial that they already had received (and some they weren't even supposed to receive) in conjunction with donors' previous contributions to Modest Needs. Some of these testimonials had 'dollar values' attached to them, while some did not.
This situation obviously resulted in some confusion for our donors, many of whom received upwards of 40 or 50 'thank you' notes, some of which were attached to applications they'd never heard of before, and in rapid success
If you were affected by this little maintenance glitch, the thing to remember is that these are copies of OLD thank-you notes - notes you probably already received some time ago. They are not new 'thank you' notes and should not be taken as an indication that you have made new contributions to Modest Needs that you did not authorize, or that the security of our system has somehow been comprised.
Rather, during maintenance, our system accidentally was 'reset' so that it didn't realize it had already provided these thank-you notes to donors, and so it did what we'd asked it to do under the circumstances: it sent those notes to donors for what our system thought was the first time.
Of course, we have taken steps to ensure that this situation does not recur either on our end or on the end of our hosting company. But you probably all know how it goes. Sometimes, when you're working with technology as often as we do, these little snafus do occasionally pop up.
In this case, all I can do is ask to forgive the barrage of email that they received on Saturday and offer each of you my promise that the situation will not recur.
Again, I want to thank you for your kindness, your understanding, and most of all, your support of Modest Needs. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day!
I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize for the rapid-fire succession of 'testimonial' emails that many of our donors received over the weekend. With regard to these emails, please allow me to explain what happened:
This weekend, our hosting company performed some routine maintenance on our database server. As a result of that maintenance, at 1:30pm on Saturday, our system forwarded to our donors copies of every testimonial that they already had received (and some they weren't even supposed to receive) in conjunction with donors' previous contributions to Modest Needs. Some of these testimonials had 'dollar values' attached to them, while some did not.
This situation obviously resulted in some confusion for our donors, many of whom received upwards of 40 or 50 'thank you' notes, some of which were attached to applications they'd never heard of before, and in rapid success
If you were affected by this little maintenance glitch, the thing to remember is that these are copies of OLD thank-you notes - notes you probably already received some time ago. They are not new 'thank you' notes and should not be taken as an indication that you have made new contributions to Modest Needs that you did not authorize, or that the security of our system has somehow been comprised.
Rather, during maintenance, our system accidentally was 'reset' so that it didn't realize it had already provided these thank-you notes to donors, and so it did what we'd asked it to do under the circumstances: it sent those notes to donors for what our system thought was the first time.
Of course, we have taken steps to ensure that this situation does not recur either on our end or on the end of our hosting company. But you probably all know how it goes. Sometimes, when you're working with technology as often as we do, these little snafus do occasionally pop up.
In this case, all I can do is ask to forgive the barrage of email that they received on Saturday and offer each of you my promise that the situation will not recur.
Again, I want to thank you for your kindness, your understanding, and most of all, your support of Modest Needs. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day!
Comments