Happy Birthday to us. The Secretary of State filing we did 17 years ago makes this, 1/11, our official birthday!
History
In 2002, Trail Blazer Campaign Services, Inc. purchased the Trail Blazer software package from Aspen Software. Aspen had been selling Trail Blazer for about 10 years focusing primarily on FEC compliance reporting.
In 2002, as we worked with our clients and created a new version building from the ground up using newer technology. We quickly adapted the key features of the existing software to the new .NET Framework from Microsoft.
Those early 2002 clients included many Political Action Committees, a US House member, candidate for US house, a State Political Party, a couple of US Senate candidates, a Governor candidate, and several local and other statewide elections in over 5 states.
Our growth was pretty steady until 2005-2006 when we began to have our FEC tools fully updated in the new system. We also started with other State reporting systems at that time, including LA (Louisiana) reporting system know as LEADERS. Now nationally recognized clients began to use our software for state house and state senate races. With many of the past clients beginning to make runs at higher offices those candidates and staff continued to use Trail Blazer.
During the 2003-2005 time frame we added grassroots tools, mass email, web integration, events, polling and more. Our philosophy is that a central database makes for simpler and better run campaigns.
In 2007, we partnered with a national nonprofit fundraising coach and launched our Nonprofit Manager product and became a member of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.
From 2008 to 2018 we saw huge growth in the number of nonprofit clients and in the political clients. We have continued to introduce new and exciting features. Features like ticket sales and reserved seating for our clients that run theaters or for fundraising events. The document storage feature has been a big success. Our political campaigns saw turf cutting (mapping) released on our Trail Blazer IQ site and the Android and iPhone applications for canvassing and donor look have been used to rave reviews.
As we head into this new exciting year of 2019 we have a lot of new things planned. We look forward to the next phase of Trail Blazer, our 18th year will be exciting. More to come.
** Trail Blazer products are used primarily in the United States and Canada, plus a few clients overseas. **
*2009-01-15 Fireplace and landscape view at the old office
