Private equity funding is facilitating a tech mashup with the acquisition of fundraising platform Raisely and coupling it with Aplos, a provider of SaaS (software as a service) to nonprofits that is already in the portfolio.
ASG, a privately-owned software vertical backed by Alpine Investors, announced the acquisition of Raisely this week after having acquired Aplos in February 2022. Terms of the deal and revenue numbers for the two companies were not disclosed.
“This isn’t a merger. The Raisely brand and product will continue, and Aplos will continue running its brand and product. However, the two companies do plan to collaborate, share learnings, and work together to further their shared goal of helping nonprofits do more good,” ASG spokesperson Celena Carr-Thomas told The NonProfit Times.
For Raisely, an Australia-based company whose client base is mostly outside the United States, the acquisition and pairing with Aplos will provide it an inside track to the U.S. market where most of Aplos’ clients are based. There is not a large amount of overlap between their clients given their geographic concentrations, but both have expertise serving nonprofit and charitable organizations, said Carr-Thomas.
Raisely has approximately 35 employees working remotely around the globe. Aplos has about 100 employees with some based at its headquarters in Fresno, California and others based remotely at locations across the U.S. All will continue, for now, in their current roles. The same holds for management. Raisely CEO Tom Maitland and his co-founders Murray Bunton and Katrina Huergo and Aplos CEO Anush Vinod will remain in their postions. “There are no layoffs planned. In fact, we plan to continue growing and investing in both the Aplos and Raisely teams to support their future plans,” said Carr-Thomas.
In the short term, those plans include building on the $250 million that Raisely has helped nonprofits raise through its online fundraising platform since the company’s founding seven years ago to what Maitland called “the next milestone” of helping them raise $1 billion. “That means finding partners with the expertise to help us grow faster than we have before, on a foundation of values that match Raisely’s, and we’ve found that with Aplos and ASG,” Maitland said.
Vinod said the two firms working side-by-side will contribute greatly to Aplos’ benefit as well by enabling it to equip Raisely’s nonprofit clients with Aplos’ enterprise accounting and financial management software solutions.
Sean Offner, vice president of ASG and a board member at Aplos, described the acquisition of Raisely and the planned pairing of the two companies as a win-win for everyone. “Raisely’s mission aligns perfectly with our belief at ASG that capital can be a force for good,” Offner said.
Deutsch Miller, a law firm headquartered in Sydney, Australia, acted as legal counsel to Raisely in the transaction. Willkie Farr & Gallagher, with offices in New York and Washington, D.C., and Johnson Winter Slattery, based in Adelaide, Australia, served as legal counsel to ASG.
