Digital fundraising platform Qgiv has been acquired by Bloomerang, the constituent relationship management platform based in Indianapolis. Terms of the deal, which closed during December, were not disclosed.
The deal brings together two well-known nonprofit sector brands that combined will have 23,000 client organizations, 500 employees and a projected $1 billion in donation volume, said Bloomerang CEO Dennis Fois.
There are no immediate plans for rebranding Qgiv as Bloomerang, said Fois.
Both firms are backed by private equity funding. Bloomerang’s private equity is from JMI Equity with operations in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and San Diego. Qgiv was launched with seed capital and two rounds of venture funding. It was acquired by Sphere Payments, a subsidiary of TrustCommerce, via its financial sponsor Waud Capital Partners, through a leveraged buyout for an undisclosed sum in April 2019.
Fois stressed during an interview with The NonProfit Times that the deal is not the usual venture or equity capital acquisition where funders push deals to enlarge companies. And, Qgiv has long been integrated into the Bloomerang platform.
“The teams wanted to do it and not financiers,” said Fois. It often doesn’t work “banging companies together and rebranding them. What you need to do is look at the customer experience and understand what customers want,” he said.
“We looked at 48 companies and really it was extremely important to us that it is really mostly people. The technology side is the magic about software” that you can make it do what you want it to do, “but for us it is the ability to combine and integrate into one easy to use giving platform,” he said. Fois compared the goal to “Apple-like simplicity here,” admitting the firm isn’t there yet but is striving toward it.
“We feel very strongly that the combining of fundraising and donor management will not only be able to deliver a far simpler and easy to use system but also something that is more sophisticated in which you connect information, donor preferences without having to ask it to do that,” said Fois.
Todd Baylis, Qgiv co-founder and chief executive officer, becomes Bloomerang’s chief fundraising officer. Baylis and his Florida State University roommate Peter Rudden conceived the firm in 2007 while at the university. Rudden left Qgiv a year ago and is pursuing interests outside the charitable space, Baylis said.
Qgiv will remain headquartered in Lakeland, Florida but the estimate for the combined firms is that 70% of the staff works remotely.
Bloomerang has had a growth spurt of late. The firm has raised $33.9 million in four rounds of funding. There was the seed round in August 2012, an angel round of $930,000 in October 2012, and a venture round in September 2020. The firm received $33 million in debt financing in February 2021. The firm’s other two sources of capital are the founders’ original investment and debt financing from CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce ). JMI Equity has three board seats at Bloomerang.
Bloomerang acquired fundraising platform Kindful in January 2021. Following the March 2023 acquisition of InitLive, Bloomerang rebranded the volunteer management platform and completed the integration with its donor management platform.
Qgiv made a few purchases, too. It acquired Connect2give in January 2018 and Acceptiva in April 2020. “For 15 years our focus at Qgiv has been providing best-in-class fundraising technology to help nonprofit teams raise more in support of their missions,” said Baylis.
Fois said Bloomerang’s investors are looking at a longer horizon than the typical venture funders. JMI Equity was on Inc. magazine’s 2023 list of founder-friendly investors. “The last couple of years it has been fascinating to see how capital was deployed. The conversations now are much different, more balanced growth,” said Fois. “What they are looking at is can Bloomerang become the market leader in the sector, mid-market.” The company has no plans for an enterprise level product, he said.
