GiveCampus, a leading fundraising platform for non-profit educational institutions, has raised $50 million in minority growth equity financing led by Silversmith Capital Partners, a Boston-based growth equity firm.
Several individual investors also participated in the financing, including Y Combinator Managing Director Michael Seibel, Stripe Executive Claire Hughes Johnson, and founding HubSpot team member, Mike Volpe.
The financing marks the first time the bootstrapped company has raised capital since raising less than $1 million from family, friends, angel investors, and Y Combinator in 2015.
GiveCampus was founded in 2014 to help advance the quality, affordability, and accessibility of education by equipping fundraisers at schools with the technology needed to engage more donors and raise more money. The platform supports educational fundraisers’ most mission-critical priorities, from providing donors with a frictionless online giving experience to identifying and engaging alumni with significant giving capacity, to scaling the impact of volunteer programs. Since its launch in 2015, GiveCampus has facilitated more than $2 billion in charitable giving to more than 1,000 colleges, universities, and K12 schools.
“We founded GiveCampus because we believe it should be easy to make a gift to your school and that fundraisers at schools deserve cutting-edge technology designed specifically for them. 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.
Kestrel Linder, in a blog post, said the fresh capital will be used to build more cutting-edge technology specifically and exclusively for fundraisers at educational institutions, continue to enhance its online giving solutions, and expand its platform’s enablement of the critical workflows that come before and after a donor makes a gift: identification, engagement, solicitation, and stewardship.
Jim Quagliaroli, Silversmith Managing Partner, said,
“Fundraising is a critical component of school budgets. Without effective fundraising, schools face a choice between cutting budgets or increasing tuition and fees, both of which harm students and especially students from less advantaged backgrounds. GiveCampus is a game changer, helping schools of every shape and size advance their missions through significantly improved fundraising outcomes. It is rare to find software companies that deliver so much real, measurable value to users and society as a whole. We are excited to work with Kestrel, Mike and the entire GiveCampus team as they continue to play a vital role in ensuring that a high-quality education is accessible and affordable for everyone.”
As part of the investment, Quagliaroli has joined GiveCampus’s board of directors alongside the company’s co-founders.
GiveCampus said since its founding the company has achieved major milestones including surpassing a revenue run-rate of $20 million, six consecutive years of profitability and positive cash flow and donating $1 million in free fundraising support through The GiveCampus Social Mobility Initiative.
