The investment was made through the Okta for Good Fund, a fund at Tides Foundation, and comes at a critical time as the global pandemic tests the limits of — and provides more evidence for — the need for capacity-building infrastructure for the nonprofit sector. Growth capital funds will be allocated to build out the next version of the TechSoup marketplace, improve business processes, and create more Apps for Good.
The Okta for Good Fund investment will contribute to an estimated $141 million of additional resources distributed to the nonprofit sector by 2023.
“The global COVID-19 crisis gives urgency to our partnership with TechSoup as we work to help nonprofits harness technology to power and scale their missions,” said Erin Baudo Felter, Vice President of Social Impact at Okta. “By supporting TechSoup’s growth strategy, we are also advancing Okta’s Nonprofit Technology Initiative to rapidly support nonprofits’ move to the cloud, support digital transformation to enable nonprofits to reach their stakeholders digitally at scale, and securing nonprofits and their critical data.”
“The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the critical need to build a more flexible and resilient technology infrastructure for nonprofits globally,” said TechSoup CEO Rebecca Masisak. “Okta’s significant new investment will help us address this by expanding TechSoup’s services and financing five new initiatives to help civil society around the world leverage technology to create, connect, activate and transform their organizations and communities.”
Okta has been a long-standing partner of TechSoup. In March, the Okta for Good Fund provided a $250,000 grant for the Global Data Research Initiative and in 2019 Okta was part of a group of Bay Area technology corporations, including VMware, Box, Adobe, and Cisco, that granted $500,000 for TechSoup’s Digital Transformation Initiative.
Funding the future of nonprofit infrastructure
Okta joins a growing coalition of individuals and organizations, including VMware, Microsoft and the Nonprofit Finance Fund, who have come together to invest in TechSoup’s future through grants, loans and direct investments. To date, $8.6 million, or about 75% of the $11.5 million target, has been committed to funding TechSoup’s growth capital campaign.
The Okta for Good Fund investment was made through TechSoup’s Direct Public Offering (DPO), a pioneering fundraising approach that enables nonprofits to raise growth capital through investments rather than donations. The DPO enables individuals and organizations of any asset size to invest directly in the nonprofit, without a lengthy grant process. With investment minimums as low as $50, the DPO is uniquely structured to democratize impact investment and engage with TechSoup’s community, including the nonprofits they serve and the technology companies they partner with.
“Less than 1 percent of philanthropic dollars go toward nonprofit infrastructure programs. Okta’s support will enable us to address this significant structural issue in civil society and help close the nonprofit digital divide,” said Masisak. “Whether it’s supporting nonprofits struggling with the transition to remote work or small front-line human services organizations that are facing greater needs in their communities and must provision services in new ways, our capital campaign will help civil society organizations bring people together amid this pandemic to make an impact on the issues they care about most.”
