GiveSignup Closes Series A Funding Round To Compete With Eventbrite, GoFundMe and Classy
The First Purpose-Built Event and Donation Platform for Nonprofits Launches Into $50B+ U.S. Market for Online Giving as Virtual Events Heat Up and Live Events Return.
- (1888PressRelease) February 25, 2021 - MOORESTOWN, N.J. — GiveSignup, the first purpose-built Supporter Engagement Platform for nonprofit revenue generation, today announced closing of its Series A funding round with a 25% boost from new investors: CloudBees Founder Sacha Labourey and former Eventbrite CFO Randy Befumo. Led by Payroc in September 2020, the total Series A round closes at $3.2 million.
• CloudBees founder and former Eventbrite CFO invest
• 100+ new nonprofits onboarding weekly to base of 9,000+ nonprofits
• Highly vertical technology stack delivers 2,000+ annual updates with zero downtime
“We’re a kick-ass technology company well-positioned to seize the $50+ billion U.S. market for online giving,” shared Bob Bickel, founder and CEO of RunSignup | GiveSignup and investor in the Series A round. “With our seasoned team of tech nerds, we were able to quickly pivot from live to virtual events in 2020; onboard 50% more nonprofits annually; and deliver 2,000+ technology updates to help our customers navigate the pandemic, raise money, and engage with supporters.”
GiveSignup has entered the nonprofit tech market at scale by leveraging the existing customer base of its already established 9,000+ nonprofits on the RunSignup platform, the largest all-in-one, trusted platform for endurance races and events. Spurred by customers asking for support for Giving Tuesday campaigns, golf tournaments, galas, birthday fundraisers and more, GiveSignup shares the same highly vertical technology stack and integrated payment model of RunSignup yet features a separate ticket and fundraising platform purposefully built for nonprofits.
Technology Wins
The nonprofit software industry is highly fragmented and characterized by intense rivalry. Primarily served by marketing and sales-driven firms, nonprofit organizations often pay expensive subscription fees and are locked into exclusive contracts for antiquated technology.
“Technology wins. By combining a self-serve based customer interaction model with a transaction-based pricing model, we are able to offer free and flexible tools with no subscription fees or lock-in. This level of customer alignment means we are highly motivated to find ways to help our customers generate revenue,” added Allison Bickel, GiveSignup product leader. “We engaged more than 100,000 customers in 2020 — this not only fuels our development effort but also delivers better products at lower costs to nonprofits.”
Meet the Investors
Leading the Series A round, Payroc CEO Jim Oberman welcomes the following new investors, adding, “Market transparency, seamless customer dialogue, and continuous technology development are the cornerstones of this vibrant new entry to the nonprofit market. Together with the domain expertise of Randy and Sacha, we can help GiveSignup reach its goal of raising $1 billion annually for its nonprofits.”
Randy Befumo, the former CFO and VP of strategy at Eventbrite, oversaw the $200+ million 2017 private funding round and led the finance effort for the successful 2018 public offering. While he was at Eventbrite, Randy helped to grow the platform from 17 million paid tickets in 2013 to over 109 million paid tickets in 2019. Randy exemplifies the shift in technology executives transitioning to industries helping the world — now advising GiveSignup on future financing needed to fund growth strategies as well as in his current CFO position at Bolt Threads, an innovative company using sustainable sources to deliver the next generation of materials.
“I met Bob several years ago and have been a long-time fan of how RunSignup served the endurance market,” said Befumo. “Each category within events requires a comprehensive set of tools to enable a successful event. RunSignup empowered race directors, earning their loyalty in terms of repeat activity. When he outlined the plans for moving into the nonprofit space with GiveSignup, leveraging common infrastructure for RunSignup but building the critical elements necessary to make nonprofits successful, I was excited. It is a large, fragmented market that is underserved by incumbent software vendors. The GiveSignup strategy of building a Supporter Engagement Platform based on transaction pricing for donations and tickets, while offering other capabilities gratis, provides a value-add alignment with their nonprofit customers.”
Sacha Labourey, founder and former CEO of CloudBees, helped define the DevOps market with concepts like continuous delivery and the idea that every company is a software company. He grew two organizations from inception to hundreds of employees and over $100 million in ARR, including success at JBoss, which grew from six people to over 200 before being acquired by Red Hat, and with CloudBees, which has grown to over 500 employees. He will advise GiveSignup on optimizing development processes and infrastructure to deliver technology solutions to customers.
“Bob and I worked together at JBoss, and he is currently a board member at CloudBees,” said Labourey. “I’ve been impressed with how RunSignup | GiveSignup has used the continuous development process promoted by CloudBees to release thousands of updates to their platform per year, providing new features to better serve their customers. I am excited for this opportunity to invest and participate in this exciting technology company and their mission to help their customers raise more money.”
Technology Platform Innovations
GiveSignup is an all-in-one, peer-to-peer, open-API, SaaS platform. Its continuous development model enables GiveSignup to go to market faster with innovative capabilities that make it easy for nonprofits to use the technology with no costly human intervention. Key competitive benefits include:
No platform, subscription fees or lock-in contracts. Save money with free websites, email marketing, open-API integrations, virtual and hybrid tools, and DIY fundraising.
Easy-to-use and self-serve platform. Save time by creating DIY fundraising campaigns, ticket events, donation websites and forms, and run/walk/ride events in minutes.
Free Facebook fundraising integration. Auto-create a Facebook fundraiser; amounts raised are automatically synced, so nonprofits and participants can reach their goals faster.
Brand control. Exclusive domain ownership of fundraising campaigns by designing free mobile-optimized websites with no outside advertising.
Supporter engagement. Turn event participants into donors and advocates by producing a variety of peer-to-peer fundraising events via free digital and social marketing tools.
Unlimited free and flexible user permissions. Enable team members, volunteers and supporters to access, view, manage and export needed information.
No more merchant reports, VLOOKUPs or chargebacks. Bundled payment processing. Report and analyze fundraising efforts through easy-to-understand analytics on a nonprofit dashboard.
About GiveSignup
GiveSignup, the first purpose-built Supporter Engagement Platform for nonprofit revenue generation, leverages the organization’s all-in-one RunSignup SaaS platform, the largest and most trusted platform for 22,000+ endurance races and events, supporting 9,000+ nonprofits annually. Uniquely built on a highly vertical technology stack with an integrated payment model, GiveSignup empowers nonprofits to raise money and engage supporters — from live and virtual run/walk/ride and ticket events to donation sites and fundraising campaigns. For more information, visit www.givesignup.org, or follow GiveSignup on Facebook and LinkedIn.
GiveSignup, RunSignup, GiveSignup | RunSignup, and Supporter Engagement Platform are trademarks of RunSignup | GiveSignup. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Tags: GiveSignup, RunSignup, nonprofit, donation, revenue generation, event registration, fundraising, crowdfunding, Eventbrite, GoFundMe, Classy, fintech, investor, Bob Bickel, Randy Befumo, Sacha Labourey, Jim Oberman
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