Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Pitch

GoodTwo helps nonprofits link fundraising to group buying

By Lynette F. Cornell

GoodTwo
Headquarters: Boston
Phone: 617-945-8565
Email: bill@goodtwo.com
URL: www.goodtwo.com
Founded: 2010
Employees: 5

In the company’s own words:
“GoodTwo is the first company to put the power of group buying into the hands of fundraisers with a free platform for nonprofits, community organizations and individuals raising money for a cause. GoodTwo provides a system where fundraisers create personalized campaign pages, select from a menu of local and national deals that reward donors, and promote by Facebook, email and Twitter. Any time someone purchases a deal, the fundraiser receives a donation, the donor gets the reward and the company offering the deal gets a valuable cause association and a new customer.”

About the technology:
The company’s online fundraising platform serves as a launch pad for organizations of any size to build a campaign that is hosted and managed through GoodTwo’s website. The organizations can choose which merchant deals they would like to use in a campaign and then direct their target donor base to the site to purchase the deals. According to Yucatonis, GoodTwo’s model does not require the company to market to its own database and convince the potential customer of the merits of the cause being promoted. Instead, the organizations themselves promote their campaign and send traffic to GoodTwo’s site for deal purchases. Since its launch last December, the company has hosted the fundraising campaigns of approximately 50 organizations. Its current partnerships include chapters of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training, the Alzheimer’s Association, the American Lung Association, Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, AIDS Walk Boston, the HandsOn Network and others. The company is targeting profitability in 2012.

People behind the company:
Bill Yucatonis, chief executive officer, is also the CEO of another startup, a Boston-based deal of the day site called CoupMe Worldwide LLC. Khash Sarrafi, chief technology officer, is the founder and managing director of Castle Rock Innovations LLC, the platform and technology partner behind GoodTwo. Kristen Elworthy, director of marketing and publicity, has a background in public relations and journalism.

The pitch:
The company is seeking between $750,000 and $1.1 million for hiring staff and industry-related marketing.

Partnerships:
The company currently has partnerships with local, regional and national fundraising organizations. It launched with a focus on partnerships with organizations that host Run Walk Ride events, and for late 2011, the company is expanding its focus to the school fundraising market, such as parent-teacher associations. On the merchant side, GoodTwo works with both local and national businesses that want a cause marketing platform.

The market:
The company is looking to tap into the fundraising market, which is worth $300 billion, according to Yucatonis.

The competition:
GoodTwo faces competition from two main industries – group buying sites that use charity donations as a marketing angle and online shopping sites that offer embedded donations. However, Yucatonis said that GoodTwo is the only company that provides a discount deal format for customized fundraising campaigns.