A Tampa Bay Buccaneers player has scored a win off the field.
Carl Nassib, who just re-signed with the Bucs in August as a linebacker, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding for his Tampa startup, Rayze.
The funding was solely from California-based Financial Finesse Ventures. Financial Finesse Ventures launched in October and is a fintech-focused venture arm of Financial Finesse. Rayze is the first portfolio company for the firm.
This is also Rayze’s first funding, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
“Financial Finesse Ventures has been such a huge source of support already, helping us to incubate new concepts and technology behind Rayze,” Nassib said in a statement. “We have a shared mindset of finding ways to both do well and do good without sacrificing one for the other.”
The company was founded after Nassib volunteered with some of his teammates in 2018 at a juvenile detention center. While he enjoyed the volunteering opportunity, he wanted to make a simpler way for people — particularly younger generations — to give back to their communities.
Rayze connects users, who could be seeking volunteer or donor opportunities, with nonprofits through its social media platform.
The company will use the Series A funding to scale its user base and continue finding ways to increase volunteering and donations to nonprofits. It has a patent-pending QR technology that allows users to donate to charities at events, which Nassib believes helps bring donors into a digital age.
“What Carl is doing is truly revolutionary,” said Liz Davidson, Financial Finesse Ventures CEO, in a statement. “We were drawn to the concept for its potential to significantly increase charitable giving, as well as the impact we believe it will have on users’ mental health — something social media has grappled with for a very long time.”
