Resilia, a software-as-a-service tech, capacity building and coaching services firm that specializes in nonprofit clients, closed a $35 million round of Series B financing in late October, a record amount for a solo Black female-founded tech firm in the nonprofit space.
The new funding brings the total generated through funding by the New Orleans-based company to $50 million. The amount is also the largest raised by a female company founder in the State of Louisiana.
Also in nonprofit technology, Boardable in Indianapolis, Indiana, an online board management and meetings platform, announced that it closed $2.6 million in Series A-1 financing led by Base10 Partners. It includes participation from previous investors VisionTech and Collina Ventures and introduced IU Ventures as a new investor. This latest investment brings Boardable’s total Series A funding to $10.6 million.
The Resilia funding round was co-led by Panoramic Ventures and Framework Venture Partners. Atlanta-based Panoramic Ventures focuses on companies within the southeast and Midwest United States, regions its leaders believe are overlooked. Toronto-based Framework Venture Partners specializes in technologies “that solve problems and improve the world,” according to its website.
Returning investors include Callais Capital, Cultivation Capital, Engage Ventures, Fearless Fund, The Jump Fund, Kimble Ventures, Mucker Capital and SoftBank Group’s SB Opportunity Fund. New investors include Chloe Capital, Gaingels, Goldman Sachs Asset Management Fund, Mana Ventures and others.
Resilia kicked off its venture capital success in 2020, three years after its founding, by closing on $8 million in Series A funding. Series B financing, the most recent round for Resilia, is the second round of investment and is usually contingent on the having reached certain performance milestones or achieved specific growth levels.
In Resilia’s case, the company’s reported 300%+ year-over-year annual revenue growth during the past three years played a significant part in being an attractive venture capital candidate, as did the fact that that during that time it did not lose a single one of its enterprise customers, CEO and founder Sevetri M. Wilson told The NonProfit Times. Enterprise customers are those such as Goldman Sachs or The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which have purchased at least 15 service licenses to distribute to nonprofit initiatives they support.
According to Panoramic Ventures’ website, only 14% of venture capital funding is invested in southeast or Midwest. Leaders within Panoramic Ventures also hold that companies with diverse leadership outperform those that do not have it. Women and minority founders receive less than 3% of capital investment, per Panoramic Ventures’ website.
Resilia’s leadership plans on using the new funds to expand its nonprofit client base, especially among those who have been given grants to enable capacity-building support areas such as collaboration; communications; diversity, equity and inclusion; evaluation and learning; fundraising; and technology.
“We are looking to not only continue to scale the company but expand verticals,” Wilson said. “We want to truly be able to double down on fintech, which means adding new features and looking at payment and donations operations for our existing customer base.”
Part of the expansion will include staff augmentation. Resilia currently employs 75 individuals and is advertising 20 open positions, Wilson said. By the time 2023 is well underway, Wilson hopes to have doubled the total staff size.
“We will be growing all departments,” she said. “Research and development, engineering, and the revenue positions such as sales, customer-focused staff and marketing.”
Regarding Boardable, Rexhi Dollaku, principal at Base10 Partners, said via a statement, “Mission-driven organizations help create the change we need across a variety of social, economic, and political issues. They have generally been ignored by modern software vendors. Boardable’s solution is easy to use and helps customers run their organizations better — we’re proud to support Boardable.”
Boardable also announced an addition to the executive suite. Jon Schwander is the firm’s new chief financial officer. Schwander joined Boardable with a background in the finance and software industries and has been involved with nonprofit organizations.
