Blackbaud Newsroom
Blackbaud Welcomes January 2023 Cohort of Social Good Startup Program
Six New Companies Join Blackbaud’s Tech Accelerator to Bring Innovative New Solutions to Blackbaud Customers
The newest members of the Blackbaud Social Good Startup Program have arrived. Please
join us in welcoming these six amazing companies to our January 2023 cohort!
As part of Blackbaud’s commitment to expanding the Ecosystem of Good®, the Social Good Startup Program supports early-stage software companies focused on solving problems that matter to the social good community. Since the program’s launch in 2019, Blackbaud has supported a total of 45 startups through six cohorts, with these organizations raising a collective $125 million in funding. In addition, 43% of startup founders in the program are from underrepresented backgrounds.
Program participants receive curated access to Blackbaud resources, marketing opportunities and nondilutive grant funding, and Blackbaud works with startup founders to design a unique plan for each company that addresses their goals for growth. Participants have published multiple Blackbaud product integrations in the Blackbaud Marketplace,
collaborated with other Blackbaud ISV partners to develop integrations, participated in Blackbaud events and engaged in targeted discovery with Blackbaud customers to get product feedback and implement changes to best suit customer needs. Founders
are invited to participate in the annual Blackbaud Social Good Startup Showcase at the end of the year, where they can pitch their ideas to Blackbaud leaders for a chance to create networking opportunities and ultimately win cash prizes.
“Blackbaud is committed to connecting and equipping a global ecosystem of good, with the goal of accelerating innovation in the social good sector,” said Jerry Needel, vice president, innovation and incubation, Blackbaud. “We are seeing a growing role for Blackbaud as a hub of innovation, where we can leverage our unique assets—customer reach, deep domain expertise and our leading cloud software platform for social good—to help highly innovative companies in the space grow faster, and ultimately help our customers reach their missions. Working with these passionate, mission-driven entrepreneurs has been incredibly inspiring to our team, and we’re thrilled to kick off with our latest class of startups.”
The January 2023 cohort participants are:
| Goodsend
Arjun Srivastava
|
Goodsend is a peer-to-peer giving platform that allows donors to send cash directly to local students and families living in poverty, helping them to cover basic essentials. Goodsend works with social workers at local schools and nonprofits to identify students and families that are truly in need of assistance. Donors can then use Goodsend’s mobile and web-giving platforms to simply and securely send cash directly to these recipients in their community. |
| Trellis
Justin Goodhew
|
Trellis is a SaaS platform allowing charities to easily create galas, golf tournaments and other fundraising events. Customers use Trellis because they are the only platform that can handle ticketing, auctions and government approved lotteries all in one place, allowing charities to raise up to 200% more than on other platforms. |
| Geenees
Libi Berenson Sergei Berenson
|
Geenees is a marketplace for in-kind giving, granting wishes for families in need. Nonprofits choose families to create anonymous wish lists. Donors purchase any item, and it is delivered directly to the family. With Geenees, families receive essential products, groceries, dental and educational services anonymously. Donors give meaningfully and directly. Nonprofits engage new generations of donors and easily facilitate contactless donations. Geenees leverages affiliate partnerships with retailers and service providers allowing 100% of the donation to go to the families. |
| DonateStock
Andrea Young Steve Latham Leonid Mirer
|
DonateStock is a fintech philanthropy company that is democratizing charitable stock giving by making it easy and accessible to millions of nonprofits and donors. DonateStock streamlines the stock gifting process making it fast, safe and free for donors and allowing nonprofits to solicit, receive and process stock gifts at scale. By making stock gifting easy and accessible to all, DonateStock is unlocking billions in annual funding while helping thousands of nonprofits impact millions of lives. |
| On The Dot
Melinda Garvey
|
On The Dot is a private virtual community platform that enables nonprofits to scale and grow their online communities by serving more people and delivering greater value with effective, seamless and consolidated communications and connection tools. On The Dot empowers communities of support to connect, engage and thrive in a private, easy to navigate platform, free from the distractions of social media. The company’s mission is to become the “engagement operating system” for nonprofits and organizations with too many fragmented tools and disengaged communities, so they can focus on serving the needs of their clients. |
| Procure Impact
Lauren McCann
|
Procure Impact’s mission is to maximize the dignity of work for underestimated populations. Procure Impact connects corporations with life-changing products so they can leverage their purchasing power and put core values into action to accelerate social impact. Procure Impact’s B2B marketplace features a broad and diverse selection of high-quality products manufactured exclusively by employment social enterprises in the United States. Each product on the platform provides jobs, training and earned income for individuals with barriers to work including refugees, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and those with a history of incarceration, homelessness, mental health and trauma, and addiction. |
Blackbaud accepts applications for the Social Good Startup Program on a rolling basis. For consideration in the upcoming July 2023 or other future cohorts, learn more and apply here.
Questions? Reach out to sgsp@blackbaud.com.