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Bloomerang Adds To Fundraising Platform By Acquiring Kindful

The leaders at cloud-based donor management and fundraising software Bloomerang didn’t waste much time spending some of the investment from venture capitalists back in September. Bloomerang has acquired Kindful, a software platform for nonprofits known for its third-party application integrations and online fundraising tools.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Bloomerang CEO Ross Hendrickson said that at least for the “short-term” that the Nashville, Tenn.-based Kindful brand will remain intact. Kindful Founder & CEO Jeremy L. Bolls will become Bloomerang’s chief payments officer.

The combined company will have 200 employees, roughly 70 of whom are from Kindful, according to Hendrickson.

Payment processing seems to have been the key to the deal. Bloomerang, based in Indianapolis, Ind., uses third-party processors such as Stripe and Authorize.net for receiving donations and other payments. Kindful has a proprietary system that will integrate with the Bloomerang donor management systems.

Kindful’s other strength is in online donation pages, real-time integrations and reporting tools. Bloomerang’s strength is donor management and fundraising process. Both firms had good years in 2020 with the fourth quarter, driven by #GivingTuesday, being particularly strong, said Hendrickson.

The firms had very few customers in common, said Hendrickson, but both target small to medium-sized organizations, which he described as $500,000 to $10 million in fundraising revenue. “Our target market has been underserved by legacy tech and manual processes. They deserve much more,” he said. The combination of the firms “can make a combined platform that helps nonprofits acquire new donors, increase donor loyalty, and ultimately affect their mission through thoughtful fundraising,” he said.

Both firms were launched in 2012, at least on paper. Bloomerang’s financing was from angel investors that included its founders. Kindful received $250,000 from angel investors in April 2013 and then $3.8 million in Series A funding in October 2016.

Bloomerang received a cash infusion this past September when JMI Equity (JMI), a growth equity firm focused on investing in software companies, took an equity stake. Bloomerang officials declined to say how much of a stake was taken but sources told The NonProfit Times that it was 49%. Larry Contrella, David Greenberg and Vinny Prajka of JMI joined Bloomerang founders Jay Love and Hendrickson on Bloomerang’s board of directors.