February 16, 2021
BLOOMINGTON – Civic Champs, a volunteer management platform, today announced an investment from Elevate Ventures.
The investment brings the company’s funding to $1 million since launching in 2019. The total includes previous funding from Elevate’s Community Ideation Fund, the Elevate Nexus Regional Pitch Competition, IU Ventures and the Flywheel Fund.
The latest round will enable continued growth of sales and engineering, with a goal of quadrupling revenue in 2021.
“The consistent support that Elevate Ventures has provided has been incredible,” said CEO and founder Geng Wang. “Elevate has been in our court every step of the way. It’s nice to know we have a true partner that cares about us and is easy to work with.”
Civic Champs developed the platform to offer non-profits the same level of technology as for-profit organizations. The software leverages geofencing, a location-based service that triggers an action when a device enters a set location. One-tap donations increase capacity and funding for Civic Champs’ non-profit partners.
New in 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Civic Champs launched Helping Hands. The program matches volunteers with high-risk individuals to help with daily tasks including laundry, grocery deliveries or pharmacy pickups.
Civic Champs has grown to support 61 nonprofits in 23 states. Revenue has doubled since COVID-19 hit in early 2020.
“Civic Champs has been the textbook case of what we are trying to accomplish in the Velocities region,” said Cy Megnin, Elevate Ventures’ entrepreneur-in-residence serving Velocities, a partnership supporting startups in south central Indiana. “We want to be able to invest in a company early, and coach them to level up. I am impressed with what Geng and his team have been able to accomplish, and I am very proud to be a very small part of it.”
Wang credits Megnin and Elevate with offering value-add services such as arranging connections and hosting networking events.
