Built by a Knight.
For Knights.

I became a Knight in 2011, joining a council in San Ramon, CA. What drew me in wasn't a sales pitch or a flyer — it was watching men from completely different walks of life come together, united by faith, and actually doing something for their community. That was rare. That was worth being part of.

A few years later, I transferred to Council #2469 in Gilroy, CA. I served as Treasurer for nearly five years. I understood the finances. I knew the workflow. And I deliberately avoided becoming Financial Secretary, because I knew exactly how much work it was.

Then, one by one, the men who had taken the FS role before me couldn't finish their three-year term. The role kept coming open. Finally, a Trustee I respected pulled me aside and said he believed I could do it — and they'd work on backfilling my Treasurer role.

I said yes. I've been Financial Secretary at Council #2469 for over two years now.

Here's what nobody tells you before you take the FS role:

The day after Thanksgiving — while everyone else is recovering from turkey and making plans for the weekend — the Financial Secretary is opening up the new billing cycle for the coming year. Auditing last year's records. Cross-checking every member. Creating notices by hand.

I have 27 years in product and technology. I've worked at PayPal, Blackhawk Networks, Stax, Payrix — companies that move billions of dollars through software built to handle exactly this kind of financial record-keeping. And here I was, managing dues collections for my own council with tools that hadn't meaningfully changed in decades.

It wasn't just the manual work. It was the friction at every step — printing notices, tracking down payments, reconciling with the Treasurer, filing compliance reports, chasing members who never got the paper mail. Each task wasn't hard on its own. But added up, across a full year, it consumed hundreds of hours that could have gone toward the actual mission of the council.

I didn't build DuesSync because I had a great business idea. I built it because I was living the problem — and I had the skills to do something about it.

The Financial Secretary role is unlike almost any other volunteer position in the council. You're appointed, not elected. You're the connective tissue between the local chapter and the Supreme Council. You hold the financial and membership records that keep everything running. And for the most part, you do it alone — with a spreadsheet, a printer, and a prayer.

DuesSync is the tool I wished existed when I took this role. It doesn't try to replace the Supreme Council's systems. It works alongside them — automating the parts that drain time, reducing errors, and giving every Financial Secretary a cleaner, faster way to do the job they signed up to do.

Council #2469 is my first proving ground. We're running DuesSync live, which means I'm the first user, the first tester, and the first one to feel it when something doesn't work right. That's intentional. I'm not building software for a user I've never met — I am the user.

If you're a Financial Secretary reading this, I want you to know something:

The weight you feel is real. The late nights, the reconciliations, the chasing — that's not a you problem. That's a systemic problem that every FS has quietly absorbed for years, rarely talked about, and mostly just pushed through.

You are not alone. There's a whole community of people doing exactly what you're doing, carrying exactly what you're carrying.

DuesSync is my attempt to give that community something tangible — a tool built specifically for this role, by someone who holds this role. Not a workaround. Not a generic accounting platform forced to fit. Something purpose-built, with your workflow in mind.