Company Name: Amicus.io
Headquarters: Charlotte, NC
Leadership Team: Walt Ruloff, Chairman; Cor Hoekstra, CEO; Beth Katz, Chief Product Officer
Website/Social Platforms: Website: amicus.io, LinkedIn: amicus.io, Facebook: amicus.io
Company Overview:
Americans today are giving to charity in record numbers: over $270B+ in giving in 2017 by people like you and me, growing at 4% / year. Amicus.io are the creators of a platform – Amicus ELEVATE – that allows banks to participate in the charitable giving market through value-added product offerings for everyone from the retail consumer with a checking account to the private bank client. The result is a modern, digital giving experience on par with the sites customers use every day – enhancing the brand of the bank with products aligned to their customers’ values.
What is the inspiration for your company? The genesis for Amicus was an appeal from a representative of World Vision to our founder, Walt Ruloff – a plea to introduce state of the art supply chain and process optimization software to the non-profit sector. As pioneers in 3rd party logistics and leaders in the ERP space, the founders quickly recognized the need, and found a natural starting place in the optimization of charitable funding, an inefficient process that drains up to 35% of a charity’s available resources.
We consider the digital giving experience we have created in partnership with banks, donor advised funds, and community foundations to be only the beginning of our journey of innovation in growing generosity.
Who is your competition and how do you distinguish your company?:
There are many examples of companies serving non-profits (Blackbaud, Mobile Cause), and many examples of fundraising platforms that cater to donors (GoFundMe, Crowdrise, GlobalGiving), but Amicus.io is the first that works specifically with financial institutions and non-profit donor advised fund sponsors to serve the unique needs of their client base.
Amicus ELEVATE has been designed from the ground up to integrate easily with financial institutions’ systems and business processes, bringing giving to products banks offer already, like online banking, roundups, peer-to-peer payment systems, and donor advised funds.
What is your connection to the Carolinas and reason for joining Carolina Fintech Hub? Cor and his family have lived in Charlotte, NC for the past 15 years, but he found himself on the road for most of this time. Bringing Amicus.io to Charlotte was a great opportunity to build a company in the place he calls home, and to connect to the country’s leading banks at the same time. For that reason, Carolina Fintech Hub was the perfect choice for Amicus.io, as the company continues to grow its presence in Charlotte.
Recent Accomplishments and Challenges (share with our audience how your company has made recent progress):
Amicus.io convened its product development team in Israel in March 2017, and released its platform product with GiveClear Foundation as its first client in September of that same year. The first quarter of 2018 started strong with the addition of $2M in series A funding, intense activity with major US banks, the close of Impact Foundation – a pioneer in investing for impact – and its first trade conference in Las Vegas. Spirits have remained high with the team through this period of rapid growth as Amicus prepares for the next phase.
What is Next?… (for you, the industry, the next 5 years?):
In the last 10 years, we have seen an incredible upswing in technology designed to extend the reach of the non-profits, with people donating today in record numbers to causes across the charitable spectrum. Even with this acceleration of funding available, charities still spend up to $0.35 on every dollar raised to cut through the noise and raise the next dollar.
We feel that the next movement in this space will be to reduce the cost of funding for the charity by bringing non-profits closer to the donors they serve, and making it easier for people to find and fund non-profits they really care about. Financial services companies are starting to take note of the role they have to play, with PayPal launching the Giving Fund this year, and Venmo announcing the private beta for its peer-to-peer giving service. Amicus.io is positioning itself at the forefront of this change, working with banks and foundations to help them support their customers’ charitable needs efficiently and more effectively.
