Thursday, December 8, 2011

BiddingForGood brings in $2.2M in new fundraise

By Rodney H. Brown

New federal documents show that charity auction software company BiddingForGood Inc. has raised $2.2 million in a new fundraise from a syndicate of 15 investors. According to the company’s CEO, that will go toward a new mobile version of its software.

Cambridge-based BiddingForGood is looking for a total of $2.46 million in the new funding round, according to a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. While the filing does show that there were 15 investors in the round, it does not name them. Previous backers have included Canaan Partners and Morningside Technology Ventures. Board members Stephen Green of Canaan Partners and Stephanie O’Brien of Morningside are listed in the filing as related persons, along with other board members and executives.

BiddingForGood CEO Jon Carson would only say that there are “no new investors” in the company. He did say, however, that the money would be used primarily to move quickly into the market a version of its software that would allow the operators of a silent auction to let bidders use their mobile devices instead of clipboards.

“It’s sort of a big deal,” Carson said. “We think the clipboard is going the way of the dodo bird.”

“We have observed that mobile looks like it is a killer app in the in-room silent auction world,” he added. “We’ve mobile-enabled our whole service.”

The benefit to BiddingForGood’s clients, Carson said, is that it helps eliminate the significant percentage of potential bids that get left on the table because not all clipboards make their way into the hands of the people recording the bids. Using a mobile app on each bidder’s device means fewer lost bids.

Originally known as cMarket, BiddingForGood also offers a software application for retailers and hotels to manage inbound requests for donations, in addition to its platform for clients to offer online charity auctions. Last summer, the company raised a $2.4 million inside round that CEO Jon Carson previously used to expand the donation requests service.  The company changed its name to BiddingForGood in 2009.

This new funding round brings BiddingForGood’s total venture investment to $25.7 million since it was founded in 2002 by Greg McHale, a former CEO of Boston’s Virtual Ink Corp. Carson, initially an investor in BiddingForGood when it was called cMarket, previously founded Boston’s Family-Education Network Inc., which was bought by the United Kingdom’s Pearson plc for $175 million in 2000.

According to Carson, BiddingForGood now has about 46 employees, and just this week hired former LogMeIn Inc. vice president of North American sales David Phillips to head up sales for the company.