After three years selling a software solution to nonprofits, Carol O’Brien learned her company had been acquired. Her entire department would be eliminated.
Immediately, she and her brother-in-law began work on a solution to fill a void in nonprofit software that her previous clients repeatedly harped on.
Meet Get Involved, a new startup that's eliminating pain points from the social good fundraising industry.
During fundraising campaigns, many supporters of an organization will launch crowdfunding pages on third-party applications. The problem with this is that these organizations have no way of monitoring and tracking who these supporters are and how much they have raised.
“An individual will create a campaign using the organization’s branding, and the nonprofit might not even know who they are,” said O’Brien. “That campaign may sit online next to a competing cause, a questionable cause, or maybe even an offensive cause, and the nonprofit has absolutely no control over that.”
To address this, Get Involved’s platform enables nonprofits to offer branded crowdfunding-type campaigns that integrate with their websites. Supporters can then use the organization’s website as a home base for their fundraising efforts and create a personalized template from the page to send to family and friends. All of the data generated by the campaigns, the organization and supporters returns directly to the organization.
The software also includes options for people to donate through other means outside of directly sending money. People can sign up for volunteer opportunities, give to the nonprofit’s “wish list” items, and share the cause on social media.
“We make it as easy as possible for people to get involved,” said O’Brien. “When people get involved in a campaign’s cause and have taken some action in the past to help, they are 25 to 30 percent more likely to donate in the future.”
On January 6, Get Involved announced a pre-seed investment from Connecttel, an Austin-based software engineering company. In exchange for two equity roles in the startup, Connecttel will contribute to the development of the platform.
To date, Get Involved has onboarded two beta clients with more in the pipeline, including an international organization. O’Brien said they are currently working on an integration with Salesforce, as well.
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