Company
BlueSwarm is now Fundly
Fundly offers all the power of BlueSwarm but is even easier to use.
Problem. Idea. Solution. Product. That is the story of BlueSwarm. The BlueSwarm solution was originally created to recruit, motivate and manage a MASSIVE team of fundraisers for the 2008 presidential race, a race defined by cutting-edge fundraising techniques.
The solution worked so well that the fundraisers who used the solution encouraged the original development team, led by Erik Nilsson and James Nicol, to create a product that could be used to fundraise, not only for political campaigns but for non-profits and colleges & universities.
BlueSwarm makes setting up and managing fundraising teams easy
Whether you are a political organization, a non-profit, or an institution for higher education, BlueSwarm gives you a
- volunteer fundraiser action center,
- centralized fundraising management platform and
- anytime/anywhere donation processing
The BlueSwarm methodology is based on:
- Empowering your supporters to reach out to their networks with branded tools and materials that are conducive to contributing
- Motivating those supporters to fundraise with incentives and accountability by making fundraising progress easy to understand
- Instilling the practice of driving a lifecycle that consistently converts donors into fundraisers.
BlueSwarm’s robust web-based fundraising platform (did we mention "award winning?" One Polly and one Reed in its first year of operation) has been battle tested by almost 10,000 fundraisers who raised $110 million during the last election cycle.
Our Story
2007
BlueSwarm started life as a simple donation processing tool created for the 2008 presidential elections. It was designed to process and track credit card donations for 400 fundraisers during a 1 day event. The goal of these fundraisers was to raise $1 million in 1 day.
The event turned out to be the most successful 1-day political fundraising events to date, raising $6.5 million in a little over 6 hours. The BlueSwarm tool was shut down for good... or so we thought.
The next morning, our phones rang off the hook. The fundraisers wanted access to their accounts so they could continue fundraising and tracking their efforts. Our team responded to this market demand by spending the remainder of the primary season rapidly evolving BlueSwarm to meet fundraisers’ immediate needs.
2008
Over the course of the 2008 presidential primary race, BlueSwarm processed and managed over $65 million in political donations. By election day, BlueSwarm had created a community of 9,000 fundraisers who raised $102 million.
We realized that BlueSwarm’s concept of “social fundraising” was changing the way organizations recruited and supported their supporters, volunteers, and advocates.
At the conclusion of the 2008 elections, we went back to the drawing board to take what we’d learned from our 9,000 users to turn BlueSwarm into a platform that could be used by non-profit or charitable organization. Our product development focused on the behavior of our users. How did our most successful fundraisers use BlueSwarm? What where their favorite features? What features didn’t they use? How did what they say they were doing differ from what they actually did? The productization of BlueSwarm became an exercise in applying social fundraising behavoir into a web-based fundraising tool.
2009
In March we released BlueSwarm to the world and a social fundraising movement was born. By the end of the year BlueSwarm was powering campaigns and non-profits at all ends of the spectrum, including over 50 Federal and State level political campaigns, foundations and social-good non-profits, and pilot programs at institutions of higher eduction.
Not a bad start for a 9 month old piece of software.
2010
BlueSwarm participated in:
- 50% of all US Senatorial races,
- 35% of all state gubernatorial races,
- enters both the nonprofit and higher education markets.
In September BlueSwarm rebrands itself as Fundly. The story continues at Fundly.com...
