SureImpact Inc. grew by nearly one-third in 2023 amid a tough tech and nonprofit landscape and starts this year with exposure to a global audience for its software seeking to transform philanthropy by demonstrating which interventions actually work.
Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit, a new offering from the tech giant geared for the industry, will include the Liberty Township startup as an independent service vendor, founder and CEO Sheri Chaney Jones said.
"It’s a channel partnership," she said. "It will allow us to sell anywhere in the world."
SureImpact is set to appear in the app marketplace for nonprofit cloud customers within several weeks. Also, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) associates will be able to sell SureImpact directly.
So far 439 organizations, serving a collective 200,000 clients, use data from the software to improve their effectiveness by boosting what works and eliminating what doesn’t, and in turn donors and taxpayers can steer their dollars to the most effective programs. For example, whether a voucher program results in more people finding stable housing.
"We're seeing more and more of an expectation from funders that nonprofits are bringing this kind of data to the table," Jones said.
Subscription revenue when annualized grew by 31% in 2023 over the prior year, Jones said.
"Given the landscape of the economy, the environment, the challenge that tech startups had this year, I am pretty pleased," she said. "I’ll take slow and steady growth in this current environment."
Since raising a $2 million seed round last spring led by Columbus-based Rev1 Ventures, she said, leadership decided to conserve that capital instead of making an aggressive push.
SureImpact is on a path to profitability, she said, and any future fundraising would be to accelerate growth rather than out of necessity.
The capital did help hire software engineers on staff instead of as contractors, which helped build the company culture, Jones said.
Microsoft is the biggest development for this year, but local partnerships are a key growth strategy.
"We have this plant and expand approach here in Ohio," Jones said.
The Columbus Department of Development signed SureImpact last year to track results over the next three years for all 112 nonprofits that received Elevate grants through two rounds, using federal Covid relief dollars. Already a dozen of the nonprofits became direct SureImpact customers, and the city is expanding use of the platform for after-school programs.
The Ohio Department of Health also is using the software to measure results from grantees.
The company also opened a Miami office because of a concentration of nonprofit clients in Florida.
One of Columbus Inno's Startups to Watch for 2023, SureImpact has seven full-time employees. Jones also was an honoree in the inaugural Women of Influence awards from Columbus Business First.
SureImpact was inspired by Jones' prior consulting business, Measurement Resources Inc., which she started in 2010 to provide data-driven insights to help nonprofits operate more effectively.
That business is still going, and a referral partner for the tech company. Jones compared it to accounting firms: CPAs now use software to tally up ledgers so they can focus on helping clients strategically use that data.
"SureImpact automates the busywork," she said.
The startup aims for $5 million to $10 million revenue over the next several years.
"I expect to be ubiquitous for impact measurement," Jones said.
