FreeWill Raises $30M in Series B to Transform Nonprofit Fundraising
FreeWill, a social-good enterprise at the nexus of philanthropy and estate planning, announced it has raised $30 million in Series B funding round led by Bain Capital Double Impact alongside existing investors. This round follows a previous Series A financing led by ICONIQ Growth, which also included QED Investors, Ulu, Highland, Pear, and HearstLab. FreeWill will use the new capital for product development and scaling its capabilities in providing nonprofits comprehensive planned and major giving support.
FreeWill is a public benefit corporation that was initially launched in 2017, and offers free, online software tools designed to broaden Americans' access to estate planning tools, while helping them support the charitable causes they love. The company offers a comprehensive suite of estate planning tools that have helped more than 460,000 individuals create wills and commit nearly $5 billion to more than 10,000 nonprofits through charitable bequests.
Jenny Xia Spradling and Patrick Schmitt, co-CEOs of FreeWill, said: "We founded FreeWill with a goal of raising more than $1 trillion for nonprofits. We saw that nonprofit technology -- and particularly technology around planned and major giving -- lacked the innovation seen in other areas. We want to make the highest-impact ways of giving easier for everyone involved, from donors to nonprofit fundraisers, and in doing so, transform philanthropy for the better. We're lucky to have found like-minded impact investors with whom we can collaborate."
FreeWill has also expanded its innovative product suite to enable nonprofits to accept a growing range of non-cash gifts through its Bequest Tool for legacy giving, a Qualified Charitable Distributions Tool to fundraise in real-time from IRAs, a Stock Gifts Tool for real-time giving, and a new Crypto for Charity tool that helps nonprofits – the vast majority of whom are currently unable to take crypto donations today – immediately begin accepting crypto gifts within a day.
"We are thrilled to support a pioneering mission-driven enterprise like FreeWill that is transforming the process for planned and non-cash nonprofit giving," said Iain Ware, managing director of Bain Capital Double Impact. "The company's highly differentiated offerings are building the future of philanthropy by enabling nonprofits to more efficiently raise meaningful incremental donations to expand critical services to the communities they serve. We are excited to empower FreeWill's ambitious growth and impact plan by supporting its expansion into adjacent services and customer groups and enhancing its current suite of nonprofit giving resources."
Based on five-year fundraising data spanning 2010 to 2015, nonprofits receiving only cash gifts grew fundraising 11% – only marginally exceeding inflation during that time – while nonprofits receiving at least some non-cash gifts saw 50% lift.1 The average cash gift is $120,2 while FreeWill proprietary data shows the average bequest is $48,000, the average stock gift is $10,000, and the average crypto gift is $7,000.
The preceding press release was provided by a company unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.
