Givebutter, a product-led company that developed the first free operating system for nonprofit fundraising, announced that it has completed a seed funding round totaling $7 million. The new funding will allow the company to accelerate its pace of innovation across a wide range of free fundraising tools, including donation forms, campaigns, events, donor management (CRM), emails, texting, and a new auction solution launching later this year.
This recent investment in Givebutter comes at a critical time for nonprofits. Society is more generous than ever, with the "Changemaker Generation" collectively powering $471B in donations in 2020, making it the most charitable year on record. Early reports suggest that 2021 was even greater. Despite this unprecedented generosity and push for social change, nonprofits continue to face economic challenges stemming from the pandemic and other macro events. In today's progressive but uncertain climate, having low-cost and effective fundraising tools to empower digitally-native changemakers has never been more critical.
"At Givebutter, we believe that giving is essential to human happiness," said Max Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Givebutter. "That's why we are building world-class software that's free for nonprofits and easy for donors. No matter how you choose to give, our mission is to inspire and empower you to do so. I'm proud to have investors who share this vision and excited to see what we will accomplish together."
After seeing over a million changemakers raise $300 million+ in donations using its platform during the past two years, Givebutter achieved a rare feat amongst startups: profitable, sustainable growth. With many tech valuations down more than 50% this year, Givebutter's profitable growth story is an outlier that has attracted notable investors from bootstrapped companies such as Calendly, Mailchimp, and Zapier.
"Givebutter is a rare breed in today's startup world, reminding me of the early days of Calendly," said Tope Awotona, CEO and Founder of Calendly. "They are profitable, mission-driven, customer-obsessed, and entirely bootstrapped to this point. I'm excited to see what their team can accomplish with more capital to put to work."
The $7 million seed round was made possible by 50+ value-add founders, operators, and funds, including but not limited to Ardent Venture Partners, Hyper, Tope Awotona (Calendly), Shahed Khan (Loom), Jenny Bloom (Mailchimp, Zapier), Elena Gomez (Toast), Geof Barker (Smartsheet), Shreyas Doshi (Twitter, Stripe), David Cummings (Pardot, SalesLoft, Calendly), Jon Hallett (BetterCloud), Sam Parr, Shaan Puri, Sahil Bloom, Julian Shapiro, Allen Gannett, and Jay Love. Along with the new capital, Givebutter welcomed Phil Bronner, Co-Founder at Ardent Venture Partners, to its Board of Directors as a Board Observer.
"The magic in a product-led growth company is its product, and Givebutter's large, passionate community of customers loves its product," said Phil Bronner, Co-Founder at Ardent Venture Partners. "The company's do-it-yourself platform and completely free model enabled by embedded financial services allow it to serve even the smallest changemakers, unlocking a massive market opportunity."
Givebutter was also recently accepted into the second cohort of Hyper, a prestigious new startup accelerator backed by Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz focused on distribution, community, mentorship, talent, and funding.
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.
- People:
- Max Friedman