Why Start a Company for Nonprofits instead of an AI company
People start nonprofits because they care deeply about a cause, not because they want to run a business.
It’s kind of like baseball. Nobody grows up wanting to manage the stadium lights, organize ticket sales, update the scoreboard, and make sure the concession stand’s accounting works. They want to play baseball. But all of those things still have to happen for the game to work.
Nonprofits have the same problem.
Behind every mission is still an organization that has to manage money, people, events, communication, and a hundred other things. And somehow, the solution the software industry came up with was to give them a different system for practically every one of those things.
Benevolate really started because I ran into this problem myself.
I was serving on the board of a large nonprofit, and we were using so many softwares: Mailchimp for emails, Donorbox and Fundraise Up for fundraising, Eventbrite for events, and then other information sitting in spreadsheets and different places. Each tool worked fine on its own, but none of them really knew what was happening in the others.
That became a much bigger problem when we actually wanted to use our data. We had really valuable information about our donors, events, fundraising, and engagement, but putting everything together was almost impossible. Once in a while we would export everything and try to piece it together in Excel, but that obviously wasn't something we could realistically do every time we wanted to answer a question.
So I initially started building something that could bring the main parts together.
Then some of our friends at other nonprofits saw what we were doing and asked if they could have access.
That was when we realized this wasn't just our problem.
Today, Benevolate brings fundraising, payments, CRM, events, memberships, forms, volunteers, email and SMS, accounting, reporting, and other operations into one system. Then we go deeper depending on who is using it. Synagogues can run schools, preschools, household billing, and cemeteries. Museums can manage admissions, ticketing, visitors, programs, events, and donations.
But a huge part of our product isn’t what Benevolate can do, it’s how it feels to actually use it.
We've spent a ridiculous amount of time engineering each page, choosing what information actually needs to be there, how many clicks something should take, and how someone who is completely nontechnical will understand what to do next.
Because the point isn't to give nonprofits more technology.
The point is to make the technology disappear.
And now that all of this information actually lives together, the next step gets even more interesting. With Benevolate Intelligence, an executive could ask, “Who attended three events but hasn’t donated?” Benevolate can understand their data, find the answer, and eventually help them act on it.
We've already served 15+ organizations, processed roughly $800,000 through the platform, reached more than 200,000 donors, and sent well over one million automated emails. But we're still incredibly early.
There are roughly 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States, and almost all of them have some version of this problem.
They shouldn't have to become software experts to do good.
Just like the baseball player shouldn't have to worry about running the stadium, nonprofits should be able to focus on why they showed up in the first place.
They focus on the mission.
We make everything behind it work.