Blackbaud acquires JustGiving
Howard Lake | 26 June 2017 | News
Blackbaud, digital fundraising and cloud software provider to nonprofits around the world, is to acquire JustGiving, the online fundraising platform.
Established in 2001, London-based JustGiving has enabled people in 164 countries to raise over $4.5 billion for good causes. It has helped build the extensive growth of peer-to-peer fundraising in the UK, enabling charities to handle donations and transactions, and individuals to fundraise for their favourite cause.
Charleston, South Carolina-based Blackbaud will acquire all of JustGiving’s outstanding equity interests “for an aggregate purchase price of £95 million, subject to certain adjustments”. It will fund the acquisition “with cash on hand and borrowings under its existing credit facility”.
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The takeover will proceed following a regulatory review in the UK “later this year”. The two companies will determine their full integration strategy at that time.
JustGiving staff are expected to transition to Blackbaud at that point and become part of Blackbaud’s London-based International Markets Group, led by Jerome Moisan, senior vice president and president of Blackbaud’s International Markets Group.
Adding JustGiving’s track record, tools and experience will enable Blackbaud to enhance its services both to charities and to individual donors. JustGiving’s personal crowdfunding capability is also expected to be extended to the USA and elsewhere. Blackbaud’s support is also expected to help JustGiving expand further faster.
The platform of course operates in a more competitive environment with other platforms such as the US-founded GoFundMe experiencing considerable growth. Facebook too has been developing more giving, fundraising and crowdfunding products so is more of a possible competitor than it might have looked a year or two ago. In March this year it hosted its second telethon via Facebook Live in aid of ACLU.
Blackbaud serves over 35,000 nonprofits and social good organisations. JustGiving has over 22 million registered users.
Jerry Needel, president and general manager of Blackbaud Consumer Solutions, explained the acquisition, saying: “To put their passion into action, [people] need technology that gives them the power to connect with other change agents and organisations. Bringing JustGiving into the Blackbaud family reinforces our strong commitment to catalysing the impact of individual change agents. It’s also part of our commitment to helping social good organisations navigate and respond to key shifts in giving behaviour.”
Crowdfunding and the cloud
Mike Gianoni, president and CEO of Blackbaud, added: “This is an exciting next step in our commitment to delivering modern, mobile-first, integrated cloud technology that powers social good. Together, JustGiving’s proven crowdfunding expertise and Blackbaud’s cloud solutions, customer base and leadership in the social economy are a powerful, unmatched combination that will ultimately forge deeper and more effective connections between people and the causes they support. This is the kind of innovation it takes to build a better world.”
Anne-Marie Huby, co-founder and managing director of JustGiving, said: “Social, mobile and the rise of crowdfunding combined are transforming the way people give, and the pace of change is unprecedented. By bringing together JustGiving’s community and social platform with Blackbaud’s unrivalled expertise and capabilities, we will be better able to help great causes reach more people and raise more money, more effectively and intelligently than ever before.”
Shared value company
A JustGiving statement and blog post by co-founders Anne-Marie Huby and Zarine Kharas said: “there is so much more to do. This is just the beginning”. The collaboration means “we will be able to fulfil our mission of growing the world of giving on an even greater scale and to ensure that no good causes go unfunded.”
Huby and Kharas added: “If we are to get more money to people in need all over the world, then JustGiving needs to scale up.”
They referred to Blackbaud as a “shared value” company that is “committed to giving back in many other ways”.
hey explained that “Blackbaud has invested millions in important causes around the world, gives away more free research to the industry than any company of its kind, and its worldwide employees volunteer over 100,000 hours annually to causes around the globe.”
They made the following commitment: “By coming together, we are committing to helping your charity, and many more charities across the UK, raise even more money, and to reach more people than ever before. We are excited about the opportunity to serve you better and helping shape the giving of tomorrow.”
Past acquisitions by Blackbaud include Convio, everydayhero and MyCharity.
Reactions
- Blackbaud’s acquisition of JustGiving is confirmed (3 October 2017)
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.