Charityvest, a donation platform run by Atlanta fintech startup Vennfi, closed a $2.3 million seed round ahead of the holiday season.
Charityvest lets people create tax-deductible accounts to give to charities and keep track of the amount. The platform has no fees and includes donation options for more than 1.4 million U.S.-based nonprofits with cash or cryptocurrency.
Tom Blaisdell, a former general partner at DCM Ventures, led the funding round. Teamworthy Ventures, Duro.vc, Sovereign’s Capital and Promus Ventures also participated in the round. Vennfi has raised $3.7 million this year, according to a Nov. 19 press release. The company also participated in the California-based Y Combinator accelerator over the summer.
The platform uses donor-advised funds and creates a consolidated tax receipt for donors. Charityvest Co-Founder Ashby Foltz said the company makes those funds more accessible to people of all income levels by removing fees and having $20 minimums.
People can create accounts on Charityvest and add money into a “fund,” which they can distribute to any IRS-certified charity or send to friends, who could then pick a charity of their choice to give the money. The funds cannot be removed once added to the platform, which Foltz said makes donating more intentional.
“We think that if more giving happened this way, no one would ever go back to the old donate button,” Foltz said.
With the seed round, Foltz said the company plans to double its staff of six full-time employees by the middle of next year and increase the marketing budget. Foltz and his fellow co-founders, CEO Stephen Kump and CTO Jon Koon, are Georgia Tech graduates and want to keep most of the new hires in Atlanta.
The company gets revenue through interest on funds that are kept in the accounts and through its Charityvest for Workplaces program, which allows companies to match the donations of their employees, according to the press release.
On Giving Tuesday, which is Dec. 1 this year, the company is launching a zero-fee stock contribution feature so people can donate appreciated stocks, which allows people to avoid capital gains taxes so more money goes to the charity.
Foltz said donating stocks on other platforms has typically been reserved for large donations because of the lengthy processing time. Charityvest uses technology to automate that process, which makes it worthwhile for the company to process all amounts of stock donations. People can donate stocks to any charity because Charityvest will also convert the stocks into usable funds for organizations that do not have the capability to do so.
“We are the latest and greatest platform,” said Foltz, whose competitors are Fidelity Charitable and Schwab Charitable. “The benefit of just having technology that’s been built in the modern era means you can do things like send charitable gifts to your friends through email and know it’s going to work instantaneously."
The Charityvest platform launched in December 2019 and has received more than $3 million contributions to charities, according to the press release. Its goal is $10 million by the end of the year.
