Public Good Software Raises $1.6M in Seed Funding to Revolutionize Online Philanthropy
Hyde Park Angels lead investment to expand PublicGood.com
Chicago, IL — January 27, 2015 — Public Good Software, Inc. is expanding its revolutionary online donations marketplace, PublicGood.com, with $1.6M in seed funding from an A-list of Chicago and Silicon Valley angel investors. Chicago’s Hyde Park Angels; Firestarter Fund; Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress; Chuck Templeton, founder of OpenTable; Mike Sands, former COO/CMO of Orbitz and current CEO of Signal, Inc. have all come together to support Public Good Software in disrupting the online giving space. With PublicGood.com’s easy-to-use, affordable, and sleek plug-in-play solution for nonprofits, individuals can frictionlessly donate to the causes they care about most.
“The nonprofit marketplace has been complacent for too long,” says Jason Kunesh, CEO and Co-Founder, Public Good Software. “The current players servicing the $30B market have failed to innovate. We are filling that gap with products that are meaningful and user-friendly. Organizations and investors have responded to that.”
Public Good Software makes solving the world’s most critical problems easy by handling both sides of donation. Nonprofits struggling to access their supporters and collect donations online turn to Public Good Software for customized, cost-effective giving tools that are easily integrated into their own websites. On the flip side, individuals looking to support causes they care about can find the right nonprofits for their goals right on PublicGood.com.
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The founders of Public Good met while building the technology that powered the single most successful grassroots online giving campaign in history, President Obama’s 2012 run for reelection. Now PublicGood.com combines the proven technology behind that campaign with new innovations to make donating to nonprofit organizations easy, rewarding and impactful.
“We expect that there will be explosive growth in the donation marketplace. Public Good Software has the potential to be to nonprofits what GrubHub is to restaurants,” stated Peter Wilkins, managing director of Hyde Park Angels.
In that same line of thought, Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress and early investor in Public Good said, “It’s a great way to democratize philanthropy and let everyone participate. Developing top-quality, cost-effective fundraising tools; making them easy to use by everyone, then offering them with no contract to the nonprofits who benefit by using them–it reminds me of the model we succeeded with at WordPress.”
In September of 2014, PublicGood.com quietly test-launched to nonprofits in the Chicago area. Since then, over 90 new organizations have joined the site. The company has also partnered with the Chicago Sun-Times and theChicago Reader to launch a “Take Action” button. The button allows readers to respond to the problems they read about in the news and connect with the nonprofits solving them. PublicGood.com gives them to actively engage and make a difference. With the added funding for their latest raise, Public Good Software will expand its technical functionality to provide an even better experience to an ever-growing list of new collaborators.
“We all want to change the world and make it a better place, but often times it’s difficult to engage and contribute to the causes and organizations who are actually doing the work,” said Chuck Templeton, founder of OpenTable and Impact Engine. “Public Good has the potential to be transformative to the nonprofit marketplace by providing a simple way to get involved. Their users are left with every possible reason to participate and no excuse not to. Public Good exemplifies the kind of entrepreneurial spirit I love to see in Chicago.”
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Company Description:
Public Good Software is dedicated to revolutionizing how people engage with causes and charities online by making the experience simple, rewarding and empowering. The company was founded in 2013 by veterans of some of Chicago’s biggest tech successes including Obama for America, Sittercity.com, Orbitz and Groupon. It’s cause-centric charity marketplace, PublicGood.com, launched in September 2014. Since then, over 90 of Chicago’s most important charities including UCAN, The Environmental Law & Policy Center, Cure Violence and Open Books have started to use the platform.
About Hyde Park Angels
Hyde Park Angels is the largest and most active angel group in the Midwest. With a membership of over 100 successful entrepreneurs, executives and venture capitalists, the organization prides itself on providing critical strategic expertise to entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial community. By leveraging the members’ deep and broad knowledge of multiple industries and financial capital, Hyde Park Angels has driven multiple exits and invested millions of dollars in over 40 portfolio companies that have created over 850 jobs in the Midwest since 2006.
Media Contact:
Shannan Bunting
Solstice Communications
[email protected]
773–942–1100
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