How Givebutter Grew From a College Dorm to $9B in Donations

Max Friedman didn't set out to build one of the most widely used fundraising platforms in the nonprofit sector. He and his two co-founders, Ari Krasner and Liran Cohen, started with a simpler observation: the tools available for people who wanted to raise money for a cause were either expensive, hard to use, or both. And the fees were rarely transparent.

That was 10 years ago. Today, Givebutter has processed nearly $10 billion in donations, acquired nonprofit media brand We Are For Good, launched financial products for nonprofits, and is pushing past 150 employees with plans to hit 200 by end of year.

Friedman joined the Disruptors for Good podcast to talk about the journey, the hard stretches, and what the next decade looks like for Givebutter and the broader nonprofit tech space.

Starting in a Dorm Room, Staying Bootstrapped for Three Years

The founding story is straightforward. Three college students, all involved in volunteering and fundraising, noticed that the tools available to them were either clunky or out of reach for most organizations. They built something better.

"It wasn't much more than that," Friedman said. "Some tools are better but expensive and you have to talk to a salesperson. Some are easier to use but don't have the functionality. And fees were not always transparent."

Givebutter launched with a campus ambassador program and a clear focus on young donors and student-run fundraising. The early adopters were their peers. Some of them now work at Givebutter. Others went on to start or work at nonprofits who became customers.

The company bootstrapped for roughly three and a half years. Not by choice, but by circumstance. They pitched Y Combinator and didn't get in.

They pitched investors and got rejected, by Friedman's estimate, around a hundred times. They lived and worked out of a studio apartment with bunk beds, stocked a Costco pantry, and kept building.

"Greatness to me is goodness over time," Friedman said. "You do a little bit of good every day and one day you look in the rearview mirror and you may be very surprised by the results."

By the time they graduated, the company was generating somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000 in revenue. Enough for a studio apartment. Not much more.

The Pivot That Almost Wasn't: Events, COVID, and Survival

The first major product expansion came when nonprofits started using Givebutter's donation forms as makeshift ticketing tools.

Friedman and his co-founder flew to Atlanta to see one of their biggest nonprofit customers, Brawl for a Cause, use the platform at the Mercedes-Benz stadium.

The organization raised around $350,000 through the platform that night. It was early validation that events were the next phase.

Then COVID hit.

"The two weeks when the travel ban was announced, I really thought we're not going to last through this," Friedman said. "I genuinely thought this might be the end of Givebutter."

Donations froze. The in-person event use case evaporated.

But something unexpected happened.

Demand for PPE fundraising exploded.

Local newspapers that could no longer sell advertising turned to their subscriber bases for donations, and Givebutter suddenly appeared on hundreds of local news sites.

The company didn't just survive COVID. It grew faster during 2020 than in any of the three or four years before it.

That period forced a product pivot toward virtual events and auctions. When in-person events returned, Givebutter had built the infrastructure to support them properly.

From $200K Angel Round to $50M Growth Equity

The fundraising journey mirrors the product journey: slow, then not.

Givebutter raised a small angel round in 2019, targeting $500,000 and closing on $200,000. Friedman describes it as a blessing in disguise. They hired their first two employees with that capital.

The next year, 2020, the company was profitable. In the years that followed, they raised a $7 million seed round and then a $50 million growth equity round, all on the back of a profitable, fast-growing business.

By the time investors were competing to get in, Givebutter could be selective. They prioritized mission-aligned investors who had bootstrapped their own businesses and wanted to build sustainably rather than chase growth at all costs.

"Ironically, we had the luxury of being very choosy," Friedman said, "by virtue of all the rejections we received along the way."

The Business Model: Aligned Incentives, Transparent Fees

Givebutter's core revenue model is built around tips, platform fees, and payment processing. When nonprofits raise more, Givebutter earns more. Friedman has always positioned this as the key differentiator: the incentives are fully aligned with the organizations using the platform.

That model has since been adopted by others in the space, which Friedman reads as confirmation rather than a threat. "That is a sign that the market is converging on a model that resonates with people."

The company's most recent product expansion is a financial layer called Wallet, which offers nonprofits 2.5 percent APY rewards on their balances.

Card issuing is next.

The pitch to nonprofits is simple: don't just raise more, earn more on what you've already raised. Friedman wants to shift the sector's orientation from cost-cutting to capability-building. "I want to shift the narrative from saving money to having a greater impact."

https://youtu.be/ppzqQZaC5SM?si=Dr7S7f8mmrUh_H5U

The We Are For Good Acquisition

Earlier this year, Givebutter acquired We Are For Good, the nonprofit media and community platform co-founded by Jon McCoy, Becky McCoy, and Julie Confer.

The two organizations had been in each other's orbits for four or five years before the deal came together.

Friedman pointed to HubSpot's acquisition of The Hustle as a model for what media and technology can accomplish together. The parallel is apt: a platform with scale and infrastructure, combined with a trusted editorial brand and an engaged community.

We Are For Good retains full editorial autonomy.

Givebutter's role is to extend its reach, fund local meetups, and power virtual summits. The most recent We Are For Good Summit drew thousands of virtual attendees and hundreds of in-person participants at local events, including a New York meetup with over 100 people.

"We're better together," Friedman said. "Every change maker should have access to community, mentors, and peers."

What Givebutter Actually Thinks About AI

Friedman is bullish on AI for the nonprofit sector, and he's specific about why.

Givebutter shipped 85 product updates in January alone, more than double the output compared to the same period a year prior. A significant portion of that speed comes from AI-assisted engineering and internal tooling.

But the case he makes for nonprofits isn't about efficiency in the abstract. It's about capacity. Most nonprofit teams are under-resourced. They're asked to do more with fewer people and smaller budgets than their for-profit counterparts. AI doesn't replace that need. It addresses it.

"There's not a shortage of work to be done," Friedman said. "Capacity has always been the bottleneck."

Early internal surveying at Givebutter found that a significant share of nonprofit professionals are already using AI tools for research and writing, but most don't feel they're using it effectively.

The bigger opportunity, in Friedman's view, is in CRM and data. Taking the information nonprofits already have and turning it into action.

That's what he's building toward with Givebutter's next product phase, which will be unveiled at the company's annual event called The Spread, planned for September.

On Competition and Trust

Givebutter is no longer a scrappy challenger. It has a target on its back, and Friedman is comfortable with that.

What he's less comfortable with is what he sees as an emerging trust problem in nonprofit tech. One company in the space, which he didn't name but described as publicly disclosed, was found holding $29 million in customer funds that became frozen and potentially missing. Nonprofits reported waiting 30, 60, even 90 days to access their own money.

"The last thing nonprofits need to worry about is the technology they're using and what's happening under the hood," Friedman said.

Givebutter's response has been transparency as a competitive advantage. Same-day fund access, published fee structures, and a business model that only works when their customers succeed.

The Next 10 Years

Givebutter is at 150 employees and hiring toward 200 by the end of 2026. Friedman is accelerating headcount, not pulling back, because he sees more opportunity than at any point in the company's history.

The themes he's focused on for the next decade: AI-native product development, financial tools that help nonprofits grow their resources rather than just move them, and community infrastructure that makes the sector less isolated and better connected.

"We are still just getting started," he said. "Especially with the opportunity that AI creates, not just for our ability to ship product faster, but to deliver innovation for our customers."

Interview Q&A

Q: What inspired you and your co-founders to build Givebutter?

A: We are coming up on our tenth anniversary, so it is exciting to reflect on how far we have come and how far we still want to go.

Givebutter started in a college dorm room with my two co-founders, Ari Krasner and Leon Cohen. All three of us had been involved in fundraising, volunteering, and giving back throughout our lives. It was simply part of our value system.

We were also entrepreneurial college students with different technical backgrounds. We saw that there was still a lot of friction between the change people wanted to create and their ability to actually make it happen.

There were many different fundraising tools available. Some were powerful but expensive, and you had to speak with a salesperson before you could even access them. Others were easier to use but lacked functionality. In most cases, the fees were not particularly transparent.

We saw an opportunity to bring more transparency and accessibility to the sector. Givebutter started with those few basic ideas and continued evolving from there.

Q: What did the earliest version of Givebutter look like?

A: The first phase was focused on college students and young people.

We wanted to help young changemakers become more involved in philanthropy and connect them with established nonprofits that often had aging donor bases. We imagined Givebutter as connective tissue between those two groups.

We built tools specifically for college students and launched a campus ambassador program. We called them Butter Ambassadors, and they would “spread the butter.” We leaned fully into the brand.

Many of those early adopters later became Givebutter employees, started nonprofits of their own, or went to work in the nonprofit sector.

Over time, nonprofits began using the platform more frequently, and their use cases expanded alongside the product.

Q: How did Givebutter evolve from crowdfunding into a broader fundraising platform?

A: One of the first things we noticed was that organizations were using our fundraising pages for events.

They were taking donation forms and effectively turning them into ticketing experiences, so we began building in-person event tools.

In 2019, my co-founder and I flew to Atlanta for an event run by one of our largest nonprofit users at the time, Brawl for a Cause. The event was held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which was especially exciting for me as a football fan.

They were selling tickets through Givebutter and ultimately raised approximately $350,000 using several of our tools. That gave us significant validation around the event fundraising use case.

We thought events would become the next major phase of the company. Then COVID happened.

Every in-person event had to move online. Interestingly, Givebutter grew faster during 2020 than it had during any of the previous three or four years. That accelerated our expansion into virtual events and auctions.

When events returned, we continued adding in-person capabilities. We eventually launched a CRM, donor stewardship tools, and a broader set of fundraising products.

Throughout that evolution, we tried to maintain the same principles: free, accessible, easy to use, and feature-rich.

Q: What is the newest phase of Givebutter’s platform?

A: We are very excited about financial tools.

We launched Givebutter Wallet, which allows nonprofits to earn a 2.5 percent annual percentage yield on eligible balances. That means organizations can help their fundraising dollars go further simply by keeping funds in the platform.

We are also working on card issuing and additional financial functionality.

The broader goal is to create an end-to-end solution where nonprofits can manage nearly everything they need in one place.

Q: Did the company experience any difficult periods during its early years?

A: Absolutely. Things did not always go smoothly.

We tried to raise money from investors early on and were probably rejected around 100 times. I heard nearly every possible reason why Givebutter was not an investable business.

We entered the George Washington University pitch competition and made it to the semifinals, but we did not win. We flew to San Francisco to interview with Y Combinator and did not get accepted. We pitched investors and tried to generate press coverage, but we struggled to get traction.

Those experiences helped me develop a philosophy around focusing on what you can control.

You cannot control whether an investor writes a check or whether a publication covers your company. You can control your actions every day. You can try to do good work, be a good person, and continue doing that over time.

I think greatness is goodness compounded over time. You do a little bit of good every day, and eventually you look in the rearview mirror and may be surprised by the results.

Q: How did Givebutter finance its growth?

A: We bootstrapped the company for the first three to three and a half years. That was not necessarily the original plan, but it was the circumstance we found ourselves in.

Being college students gave us time to live in a dorm room and figure out the business.

By the time we graduated, Givebutter was probably generating between $15,000 and $30,000 in revenue. It was just enough for us to rent a studio apartment that also served as our office.

At one point, we lived in a studio apartment with two bunk beds. We had an intern, and one of the benefits of the internship was access to the fourth bunk bed.

We did everything possible to save money. We went to Costco, bought food in bulk, and kept life extremely simple.

As the platform grew, we used stories such as the Brawl for a Cause event to raise a small angel round in 2019. We originally wanted to raise $500,000 but ended up raising around $200,000.

That became a blessing in disguise. We used the capital to hire our first two employees, and the following year, Givebutter became highly profitable. We did not need as much capital as we thought.

A couple of years later, we raised a $7 million seed round. After that, we raised a $50 million growth equity round.

At that point, we were a profitable business growing more than 100 percent year over year with significant customer momentum.

The early rejections ultimately allowed us to become selective about our investors. We partnered with mission-aligned entrepreneurs and investors who believed in building sustainable businesses rather than pursuing growth at all costs.

Q: What fundraising and technology trends are you seeing across the nonprofit sector?

A: It is impossible to talk about the future without mentioning artificial intelligence.

There has been a dramatic change in the last six months alone in terms of AI capabilities and what organizations can accomplish with agents.

Internally, we are already seeing substantial productivity gains. We shipped 85 product updates in January, which was more than double our output from the same period a year earlier.

There are legitimate questions about how AI should be used and what safeguards need to exist. At the same time, I believe the opportunity for nonprofits to do more with fewer resources significantly outweighs many of the associated risks.

Nonprofits are often constrained by staff capacity and budgets. Their mission is their product. Technology can help them advance that mission more effectively.

Our early research suggests that many nonprofits are already using AI, particularly for research, email writing, and copywriting. However, there is still a gap between experimenting with AI and feeling like it is being used effectively.

Givebutter operates at the intersection of fundraising, CRM data, and donor engagement. That creates opportunities to develop agentic workflows that help nonprofits understand their data and take meaningful action.

Q: How should nonprofit leaders think about AI and job displacement?

A: There is no shortage of important work to be done.

People often see AI perform something they previously did and immediately ask what will happen to their job. I look at it differently.

Capacity has always been one of the largest bottlenecks for changemakers. This is especially true for organizations addressing urgent social and environmental problems.

A tool that increases your capacity should be exciting because it gives you the ability to accomplish more.

The question should not only be what AI takes away. It should also be what AI enables you to do that you could not do before.

Software engineering is one example. There may be a sense of loss around the craft or poetry of writing code. But if you maintain a builder mindset, you begin asking whether the objective is to write code or to build great products that help people.

The output is what ultimately matters.

Q: How do you think about competition in nonprofit technology?

A: It has been interesting to go from looking at other companies and asking how we could compete to becoming a company with a target on its back.

I enjoy that. I am competitive, and I believe competition makes companies and products better. It is good for nonprofits and good for the world.

One of Givebutter’s advantages is its aligned business model. We generate most of our revenue when our customers successfully raise money, including through optional tips, platform fees, and payment processing.

We have always tried to make that model transparent.

We have seen other companies adopt similar approaches, which suggests the market is converging around a model that resonates with customers.

There are also legacy platforms with trusted and established brands. Givebutter is positioned as a more disruptive, innovative, and fast-moving company. We see many organizations looking to modernize their CRM and fundraising systems, and we lead in several of those areas.

Trust has also become increasingly important.

There have been instances in the sector where organizations could not access their funds for 30, 60, or even 90 days. That should be a major warning sign.

Nonprofits should not have to worry about whether they can access their own money or what is happening behind the scenes. Givebutter has consistently leaned into transparency and worked to build confidence around the technology organizations rely on.

Q: Why did Givebutter acquire We Are For Good?

A: We acquired We Are For Good after partnering with the organization for approximately four or five years.

We already had a long-standing relationship with John, Becky, and Julie. Givebutter had sponsored some of their work, and we had become closely connected with their community.

There was significant alignment around our shared values and vision.

Several years before the acquisition, we had conversations about content and community. They were considering creating a paid program for some of their content. We were coming from the perspective of a free platform focused on democratizing access.

Those conversations revealed how aligned we were, even before we fully recognized it.

Givebutter democratized access to technology. We Are For Good democratized access to content and community. Bringing the two organizations together made a tremendous amount of sense.

We recently helped power the We Are For Good Summit, which brought together thousands of changemakers virtually and hundreds through local gatherings.

Many traditional nonprofit conferences require attendees to pay thousands of dollars between registration, flights, and lodging. We want to help create something more accessible, local, and connected.

We Are For Good will continue operating as its own brand with full editorial autonomy. The objective is not to absorb or eliminate what they built. It is to help the team go bigger and do more.

Q: Will Givebutter pursue additional acquisitions?

A: We have evaluated different opportunities, but we generally prefer to build products internally.

Our team is exceptional, and building in-house usually produces a better and more cohesive customer experience.

You can see the opposite in many software rollups. An acquisition may make sense financially on a spreadsheet, but the customer ends up with a clunky and disconnected experience.

Two separate products may suddenly have the same company name, but they were not actually built together. Customers notice that.

That does not mean we would completely rule out acquisitions. I am particularly interested in opportunities that could help us bring meaningful innovation to customers faster than we could build it ourselves.

However, we will always ask whether an acquisition is worth the complexity it creates.

We Are For Good was an unusual opportunity because it brought together technology, media, content, and community. We looked at examples such as HubSpot acquiring The Hustle as a model for how media and technology can complement one another.

We are students of startups and technology. We want to take lessons from successful category-leading companies and apply them to the nonprofit sector, which deserves great products and great brands as much as any industry.

Q: What do you hope Givebutter accomplishes during its next decade?

A: We are still just getting started.

AI represents a major opportunity, both in terms of how quickly we can build products and how much innovation we can deliver to nonprofit customers.

I also think a lot about economic value and the scarcity mindset that exists across the nonprofit sector.

Nonprofits are often hesitant to invest in technology and systems. That is understandable because they are working with limited resources.

I love that Givebutter is free and easy to access. I love that organizations can sign up themselves and that our Givebutter Guarantee ensures 100 percent of a donation goes to the mission, even when donors choose not to cover fees.

But I want to help shift the narrative from saving money to creating greater impact.

I hope the next decade is about lifting the tide for all changemakers and growing the total amount of resources available, rather than continually focusing on reduction and scarcity.

Community will also be a major part of the next decade.

Givebutter is fully remote, but we make significant investments in bringing our employees together. We see enormous benefits when people connect in person.

We want to create similar opportunities for changemakers, many of whom are operating as solo founders, with volunteer boards, or with extremely small teams.

We also want to make fundraising and events more enjoyable and continue bringing younger people into philanthropy.

Givebutter started with the idea of making giving fun. That remains important because when something is enjoyable, people want to continue doing it.

Q: How is AI affecting Givebutter’s hiring plans?

A: Givebutter currently has approximately 150 employees globally, and we are hiring aggressively. We expect to have more than 200 employees by the end of the year.

We are accelerating hiring because we see more opportunity than ever.

People are still needed to orchestrate technology, identify opportunities, make decisions, and build meaningful things.

The profiles we hire may change. AI literacy is becoming more important, although we do not expect everyone to be an AI expert. These tools are still new to nearly everyone.

We are beginning to include AI fluency within our internal competencies and hiring process. We want to understand whether candidates have used the technology, how they have used it, and whether they are curious about its potential.

We may also see a rise in generalists compared with highly specialized roles. Some specialties are becoming more accessible through general intelligence tools, which could mean fewer purely specialized positions or a higher strategic bar for those roles.

However, people still want to interact with people. That remains true in support, sales, community, and many other areas.

I do not believe anyone wants to live in a world where AI does everything. There is an endless amount of work available for people who want to make the world better.

For Givebutter, this feels like our moment. We are putting our foot on the gas.