# Lightful secures £4 million in funding to expand its services internationally

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2018/02/09/lightful-secures-4m-funding-expand-services-internationally/
- Published: 2018-02-09T09:01:47+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**Social media fundraising platform Lightful has secured £4m in Series A funding
to expand its services and “to transform global charity sector”.**

The company claims that the funding represents the largest sum for an early-stage
start-up in the social impact space.

The Series A investors in the platform come from across the world of sport, the 
arts, business and technology. They include:

## Advertisement

 * **Nick Mason** of Pink Floyd
 * **Dario Franchitti**, IndyCar champion
 * **Jeffrey Thomas**, Lightful board member
 * **Annika Small**, awarded OBE for services to social innovation and digital technology

[Lightful](http://www.lightful.com) offers charities, individuals and social enterprises
a single platform that enables organisations manage their social media content, 
supporter relationships and campaigns from a single dashboard. Integrated with Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn, its tools include a story-builder, in-platform chat, and analytics
tools. It can be used via desktop and by iOS and Android apps.

It was founded in 2015 to revolutionise the way charities and social enterprises
drive genuine positive action through social media.

It was set up by **Vinay Nair** (CEO), **Carlos Miranda** (Chairman) and **Johnny
Murnane** (COO), from Ireland, the US and Ireland respectively. 

Nair previously worked for J.P. Morgan and Social and Sustainable Capital, one of
the largest social impact investors in the UK, and is currently practitioner-in-
residence at Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

Miranda, a serial social entrepreneur, is the founder of strategy consultancy I.
G. Advisors and Social Misfits Media, where he consults a wide variety of philanthropists,
foundations, companies, charities, and social enterprises, including the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and UN Women.

Murnane had an extensive career in management consultancy, and previously headed
up Bank of Ireland’s UK strategy division.

 

## What is the funding for?

The money raised will be used to develop its core platform with voice recognition,‘
bots’ and machine learning projects. It will also enable the organisation to expand
internationally, working with the charities and ‘beyond profit’ organisations (those
who place purpose alongside profits) that make up the **£1.5+ trillion** social 
impact sector.

Lightful has already signed up 1,800 charities, individuals and beyond profit organisations
to mobilise causes on social media, including partnerships with Comic Relief and
London’s Air Ambulance.

In addition to its core platform, Lightful will be further investing in a full-service
digital consultancy called **Lightful Services. **This will address:

 * what Lightful describes as “the lack of innovation in the sector”, and
 * build bespoke technology solutions (e.g. community portals, donation pages for
   digital fundraising campaigns) for clients

The funding will also help expand the work of Lightful’s R&D division, Lightful 
Labs, which is trialling experiential technology including artificial intelligence,
machine learning, bots and voice recognition. Lightful is this month taking part
in a charity tech hackathon with Comic Relief. 

 

## #ReclaimSocial

![Reclaim social media for good](https://wfay6x.infiniteuploads.cloud/2018/02/reclaim-
social-media-for-good-newsletter.png)

_#ReclaimSocial movement gets underway_

 

This week Lightful launched [#ReclaimSocial](https://fundraising.co.uk/2018/02/06/reclaimsocial-positive-stories-social-good-urges-lightful/),
its movement to “reclaim social media for social good”, designed to tackle recent
claims that social media platforms like Facebook are “destroying society”.

Lightful’s founders see its successful funding round as proof of interest in impact
investing, following the £95m late-stage [acquisition of JustGiving by Blackbaud](https://fundraising.co.uk/2017/06/26/blackbaud-acquires-justgiving/).

Vinay Nair, CEO & Co-Founder of Lightful, said of the successful funding round: “
With claims that social media is destroying society and acting as a purveyor of 
hate speech, there’s clearly a significant opportunity to bring about change – and
we believe the social impact space has a vital role to play. With the fantastic 
support from our incredible investors, we’re excited to try to make 2018 the year
we can finally reclaim social media – for good.”

Nick Mason, one of Lightful’s investors, said: “Many charities have been hampered
by time consuming tasks and budget constraints which inhibit progress. The Lightful
concept is easing some of these fundamental issues, and this is exemplified by the
sheer number of organisations signing up to the platform. I’m excited to see what
the next few months have in store.”

 

_Main image: Lightful founders (l-r) Carlos Miranda (Chairman), Vinay Nair (CEO)
and Johnny Murnane (COO)_

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