GiveCampus, a fundraising platform for education-related nonprofits, announced on Monday it raised $50 million led by Silversmith Capital Partners. Y Combinator Managing Director Michael Seibel and Stripe executive Claire Hughes Johnson also participated.
The minority growth equity investment follows a bootstrapped family-and-friends round in 2015 that accumulated less than $1 million.
The company was founded in 2014 to help nonprofits better streamline their fundraising capabilities. GiveCampus acts almost as a Patreon for schools—it can receive donations from fintech platforms such as Venmo or PayPal, record in-person donations, and accept cryptocurrency, effectively making donations as easy as possible for donors. It also can identify and engage with active alumni to promote ongoing donations.
The Washington, D.C.-based startup launched in 2015 and says it has since processed $2 billion in donations to more than 1,000 educational institutions.
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“As we embark on this next chapter, we will continue to obsess over the needs and priorities of our partner schools while integrating additional capabilities, data, and insights into our platform in order to drive even bigger impact,” GiveCampus co-founder and CEO Kestrel Linder said in a statement.
The company estimates annual earnings of more than $20 million and has been profitable since 2016.
Startups add charitable arms to mission
Social impact startups that make donating easy through frictionless payments are starting to see massive growth, despite not hitting the billion-dollar mark. Between 2018 and 2019, funding in the space jumped 187% and peaked in 2021 with $485 million, according to Crunchbase data.
The majority of these companies aren’t fintech platforms like GiveCampus. One, Betterfly, is a benefits platform that leverages charitable giving to incentivize employees to use their benefits. The company raised $125 million in February. Another, Sharebite, raised $39 million in June. Sharebite is a meal delivery platform, and every meal ordered results in a meal donated, according to the company.
Illustration: Li-Anne Dias
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