Seth Godin puts it simply: Do you trust that when you hit the brakes, your car will stop? Yes. Because the braking system made a promise, and it has kept that promise every single time. That’s how trust works. Not through authenticity or good intentions, but through consistency.
For most of the last century, organizations earned trust solely through human-to-human interactions. A handshake, a phone call, a face behind the counter. Today, that’s changed. The systems you choose to run your operations are now making promises on your behalf—when a payment processes instantly and as expected, when a package arrives on time, when an unsubscribe actually works—thousands of times a day, to people who may never meet you. Your technology is your handshake. And with AI, these “faceless” handshakes are only accelerating.
You already know you can consistently deliver on your promise, but can your software?
THE STAKES ARE HIGHER THAN YOU THINK
The average company now runs on more than 100 different software tools. Every one of them is a potential point of failure. And when one breaks, it doesn’t just create an operational issue. It puts the trust you’ve spent years building with your customers at risk.
Take nonprofits, for example, an area where the software trust paradigm is especially prevalent, and every transaction is an act of faith. Donors don’t receive a product in return for their money. Donors give without receiving anything tangible in return. That trust is sacred.
Increasingly, nonprofits rely on third-party platforms to process donations, communicate with supporters, and manage events. These platforms become the face of the organization, the ever-present touchpoint between a mission and the people who fund it. When the platform works, trust compounds silently over time. When it breaks, the damage is immediate and loud.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PROMISE BREAKS
In 2025, a nonprofit technology platform called Flipcause experienced payout delays that left nonprofits unable to access more than $500,000 they had already raised. Organizations couldn’t pay staff. Programs shut down. Donors who had already given were left wondering whether their contributions would ever reach the intended cause. Just months later, the company filed for bankruptcy, revealing that it owed more than $29 million to over 3,000 nonprofits across the country.
The nonprofits didn’t cause the break in trust. But they bore the consequences. Donors placed their trust in the nonprofits they supported, who, in turn, placed their trust in Flipcause. And in this case, that trust was broken badly.
The outage was damaging. But it also exposed a tension that hadn’t been named. Nonprofits are now asked to trust invisible digital infrastructure with the same confidence once reserved for human connection and personal stewardship. Most leaders were never prepared to evaluate that, let alone guard against it.
LEADERS ARE EVALUATING TECHNOLOGY INCORRECTLY
Despite all of this, most business leaders still choose the software systems that power their core operations based on features, pricing, and convenience. That made more sense a decade ago, when software was primarily a back-office tool. But it doesn’t make sense now, when software is the bridge between you and your customers, either reinforcing trust with every interaction or eroding it.
For example, platforms that process payments, hold funds, or store sensitive data should be evaluated with the same scrutiny you’d apply to a bank or an insurance provider. Leaders should be asking: How quickly can I access my funds? Where exactly is my money being held? What safeguards exist if things go wrong?
And then there are the basics. If you are unable to talk to a human in customer support, easily find transparent information about the company, or find a referral from someone you know who’s used the product, it’s time to look elsewhere.
If they can’t deliver on accountability to you, they certainly won’t deliver on accountability to your customers.
This isn’t just theoretical. It shows up every time you choose, integrate, or rely on a tool that interacts with your customer.
Every time you integrate a new piece of software, you’re saying, “I trust this tool to do what it’s supposed to do, every time our customer needs it to. Consistently.” And in doing so, you’re handing it a piece of your brand’s credibility, because if it fails, the failure becomes yours to explain and handle.
YOU CAN’T OUTSOURCE TRUST WITHOUT OUTSOURCING RISK
Godin’s framework is useful here. Trust is rebuilt by reliably making promises and keeping them. But if you’ve handed the promise-keeping to a third party, you’ve also handed them your reputation.
Every organization that depends on cloud infrastructure, data management tools, or financial software is making an implicit promise to its customers or donors: This will work. When it doesn’t, no amount of explanation will undo the damage. The promise was broken. And as anyone who has watched trust erode knows, it takes years to build and seconds to lose.
Choose your technology as if your reputation depends on it. Because it does.
Max Friedman is cofounder and CEO of Givebutter.
