Click and Pledge enables nonprofits to conduct 21st-century fund raising

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
Novermber 2006

Thank Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean for demonstrating the power of fund raising on the Internet. The former Vermont governor failed in his quest for his party’s presidential nomination in 2004, but his success in raising money online gained national attention.

Online donations are especially lucrative for nonprofit groups: The average pledge over the Internet is four times higher than one that is mailed in. But setting up, maintaining and securing an e-commerce system can be complicated and expensive.

That’s where Click & Pledge comes in. The Blacksburg-based company offers the software, online security and Web management expertise that nonprofit organizations need to solicit donations online. The 4-year-old company has done no marketing but it has 3,200 customers in 45 countries.

There are plenty of on-demand e-commerce software companies, but Click & Pledge distinguishes itself by catering to nonprofits. For example, its system allows donors to print a tax receipt, and it accepts recurring monthly donations. It also allows people to register and pay for events sponsored by the nonprofit organization.

Click & Pledge is designed so that even the tiniest nonprofits can use its fund raising services. The system is transaction-based, which means organizations pay only a percentage (on average less than 4.75 percent) of each pledge dollar collected. And customers can "pretty much start using all of our services and product fea­tures in less than five minutes," says Kami Razvan, the CEO of Click & Pledge, who holds a doctorate in engineering sci­ence and mechanics and applied mathematics from Virginia Tech.

Razvan is the founder of two other software development companies. He was serving on the board of the United Way of Montgomery, Radford and Floyd when he decided to create a program that would make it easier for the organization to collect donations online. "It wasn’t going to be a product, but then word of mouth got around and people starting asking, ‘Can we use it?’ " he recalls. "It’s really not surprising, since there’s no investment upfront, and they don’t have to maintain anything or update anything. We take care of everything."

Razvan declines to release financial figures, but he says the Click & Pledge’s revenue has doubled every year since inception. The CEO projects that revenue will double again this year and triple next year, but the company will add only a few customer service representatives to its current staff of seven employees. "We are 90 percent automated, so the operations of the company doesn’t need that many people — no matter how big we get," he says.