San Francisco, CA, June 26, 2012 – Rally.org, the social fundraising platform that helps anyone with a cause raise money, share their story, and connect with supporters, today announced that it raised $7.9 million in Series A venture capital, online. The round was joined by Relay Ventures, Mike Maples of Floodgate Fund, Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners, Kevin Rose of Google Ventures, Craig Shapiro of Collaborative Fund, and Angel investors: Michael Birch, Tim Ferriss, Eric Ries, Josh Spear, Scott Belsky, among other. Rally.org plans to use the money to continue hiring engineers and scale its technology platform.
Rally has announced a European Launch by the end of 2012. The company opened an office in the living heart of Berlin last November. Centered in the middle of Europe Berlin is evolving into an international hotspot for the startup and social communities. In a first step Rally helps and connects these communities with its social incubator “RallyPad” by support and mentors along with the Rally fundraising service.
With over 600.000 organizations that would potentially benefit from Rallys services, Germany is the perfect starting location for the European operations.
The social fundraising platform already enables 1.5 million problem solvers to rally donors and supporters to share more than 20 million stories, collecting donations and spreading awareness through their social graph.
Rally’s easy to use storytelling interface allows any kind of user to broadcast solutions to problems vexing them or their community – in just a few clicks. Its unique analytic tool set, helps users improve their storytelling and fundraising.
Tom Serres, CEO and Co-founder, believes “Rally is a platform for anyone to raise funds for causes that matter.” The company is focused on empowering individuals and causes to solve problems and build awareness on a scale never seen before. Whether that’s helping Reverend Oliver White who raised money to save his Minnesota church from foreclosure or Alvaro Salas in Costa Rica who raised more $80,000 from all over the world so he could attend Cornell University and move his family to the US. Tom feels “very excited to make Rally a global brand where anyone anywhere in the world can rally their friends and family around causes they care about especially in times of difficult economy.
Michael Birch, an entrepreneur from the UK and a new investor in Rally declares “As the founder of Bebo and the first angel investor in charity: water, we knew the Internet was a powerful mechanism for change that matters. This is why I am investing in Rally today. The Rally team understands these principles and are scaling this life improvement philosophy on a global basis.”Other investors committed to helping Rally lead this movement, include Mark Kingdon, Naval Ravikant from AngelPool, Ariel Poler, Habib Haddad, Tom Steyer, Tom Brown, Ephraim Luft, Ross Garber, Peter Boboff, Aaron Dignan, Seth Berman and Vianovo Ventures.