Scaling Impact :
How RaiseNow Partnered with Lendity to Fuel European Fundraising Growth
Strategic Growth Capital for Digital Fundraising Innovation
The Opportunity Moment
RaiseNow AG is transforming how nonprofits, charities, and social good organizations raise funds in the digital age. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Zurich, RaiseNow provides an all-in-one fundraising platform that integrates payment processing, CRM systems, peer-to-peer fundraising, and advanced analytics, all designed to help changemakers maximize their impact.
With over 54,000 organizations across Europe trusting their platform, including Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, Red Cross, WWF, and Amnesty International, RaiseNow has established itself as a leading digital fundraising technology provider. The company processes millions of donations annually, handling over €300 million in donation volume.
The market landscape presented a compelling opportunity. The European digital fundraising sector is experiencing rapid growth, with the online fundraising tools market projected to expand at a 21% CAGR through 2033. Traditional in-person fundraising methods are giving way to digital solutions, accelerated by changing donor behaviors and the need for organizations to reach global audiences efficiently. Europe represents the second-largest market for online fundraising after North America, with strong adoption across the UK, Germany, France, and Switzerland.
RaiseNow's growth thesis centered on solidifying its position as the go-to technology partner for nonprofits, charities, and clubs seeking comprehensive digital fundraising solutions. Their vision: to become the full-stack fundraising platform for:
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International nonprofit organizations requiring multi-country, multi-currency capabilities
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National charities seeking to modernize their digital fundraising infrastructure
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Community-based organizations and clubs needing accessible payment and fundraising tools
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Social enterprises and crowdfunding platforms requiring white-label fundraising technology
The Inflection Point
While RaiseNow had successfully built a robust product and achieved strong product-market fit, the company reached a critical inflection point. Their recurring revenue model was proven, their customer base was expanding, and market demand was surging. However, scaling to capture the full market opportunity required significant capital investment in three key areas:
Product Development and Innovation
Continuing to enhance platform capabilities, integrate new payment methods (including TWINT and other regional solutions), and maintain competitive advantages in an evolving fintech landscape.
Market Expansion
Extending reach beyond the DACH region into Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and other European markets, each requiring localized features and strategic partnerships.
Customer Acquisition
Accelerating growth in a market where digital transformation was creating unprecedented demand from organizations seeking to modernize their fundraising operations.
RaiseNow had already secured strategic backing from top-tier investors including SIX FinTech Ventures and PostFinance through their Series A and Series A+ rounds. These partnerships provided essential early-stage capital, validation, and support to build the team, refine the product, and establish product-market fit. Now, with clear leading product and a defined path to scale, the leadership team faced a pivotal question: how can it keep growing in a capital-efficient manner, preserving equity and maintaining financial flexibility?
Traditional solutions fell short of their needs. Raising additional equity would have been an expensive source of capital and time-consuming, requiring lengthy fundraising processes and significant dilution at a time when the company needed to move quickly. Banks and traditional lenders struggled to understand SaaS business models and recurring revenue dynamics, making conventional debt financing either unavailable or poorly structured. RaiseNow needed a financing partner who could understand the nuances of their subscription-based, B2B SaaS model serving the social impact sector.
The Lendity Partnership
Lendity approached the partnership as a co-creator of RaiseNow's growth and capital strategy. This differentiated approach combined two parallel tracks:
Capital Strategy
Lendity structured a growth loan specifically designed for RaiseNow's business model and expansion plans.
Flexible Terms Aligned with Growth
The loan structure included terms that adapt to RaiseNow's growth trajectory, without constraining investment capacity.
Non-Dilutive Capital
The growth loan provided immediate capital access without requiring equity dilution, preserving ownership for founders and existing investors while maintaining optionality for future equity rounds at higher valuations.
Speed and Efficiency
Unlike traditional fundraising processes that can take 12 months, Lendity's streamlined approach enabled RaiseNow to secure capital faster, allowing the team to maintain momentum and capitalize on market opportunities without delay.
Intelligence Strategy: The Differentiator
Beyond capital, Lendity unlocked something traditional lenders cannot. A deep business clarity through its unique sector expertise. This data-driven approach allowed for a unique ability to understand RaiseNow's business performance. By leveraging Lendity Intelligence, we all gained a deep understanding of RaiseNow’s business model, unit economics, growth efficiency, retention, acquisition, etc., including:
Comprehensive Metrics
Visibility into customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), churn rates, cohort analysis, burn rate, and runway projections, critical metrics that many growing companies struggle to track consistently.
Unit Economics Clarity
Detailed analysis of profitability across customer segments, revealing which organization types (international nonprofits vs. regional charities vs. clubs) generated the strongest returns and where to focus growth investments.
Strategic Insights for Decision-Making
Lendity Intelligence provided the analysis that helped make data-backed decisions about market expansion, product investment, and resource allocation, insights typically only available to companies with dedicated data science teams.
Comprehensive
Metrics
Unit Economics
Clarity
Strategic
Insights
The Growth Milestones
The Lendity partnership enabled transformation across multiple dimensions of RaiseNow's business:
Accelerated Market Expansion
With capital deployed efficiently, RaiseNow is successfully expanding beyond the DACH region into France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, establishing strategic partnerships and adapting their platform for new markets, a tangible growth opportunity that would have been delayed without the flexible financing structure.
Product Innovation at Scale
The company continued enhancing platform capabilities, including advanced integrations with leading payments providers like TWINT,
same as integrations to CRMs like Salesforce and various other systems, maintaining competitive advantage and improving customer retention.
Diversified Funding Sources
By incorporating growth debt alongside equity capital, RaiseNow reduced concentration risk and created a more balanced capital structure, providing greater financial flexibility for future opportunities.
Validation from Tech-Savvy Capital Partner
Lendity's endorsement, backed by deep understanding of Tech and SaaS economics and recurring revenue models, provided additional credibility with customers, partners, and future investors.
Market
Expansion
Product
Innovation
Diversified
Funding
Partner
Validation
The Ongoing Partnership
The Lendity-RaiseNow relationship continues to evolve as a sustained strategic partnership rather than a one-time transaction. Lendity remains embedded in RaiseNow's growth journey, providing ongoing support through insights and capital optionality, allowing for potential additional capital deployment as RaiseNow reaches new growth milestones, providing flexible financing options as the company scales toward becoming Europe's leading digital fundraising platform.
For founders, boards and investors facing similar growth challenges, the RaiseNow-Lendity partnership offers several key lessons:
Data visibility is power
The ability to slice and dice business metrics across segments, cohorts, and time periods transforms decision-making from reactive to proactive.
Capital diversity reduces risk
Combining equity and debt financing creates a more resilient capital structure and preserves optionality.
Partner expertise matters
Working with capital providers who understand technology business models can unlock insights and efficiencies that generic lenders cannot provide.
Speed and flexibility compound
Quick access to capital allows companies to capitalize on market windows and compound growth advantages over slower-moving competitors.
“RaiseNow stood out immediately. Not just for its scale, but for the quality of its product, discipline of execution, and clarity of mission. They had reached a point where the business fundamentals were strong enough that the right kind of capital could truly accelerate outcomes. With RaiseNow, our goal was simple. Give them the most efficient capital possible, backed by real insight, so the team could stay focused on scaling impact across Europe instead of managing dilution and distraction.”
Rafael Karamanian, Partner at Lendity
"We discovered in Lendity a partner who not only understood our SaaS business model but helped us unlock efficient, non-dilutive capital at a critical growth stage. For us, it is the next step in our development. The quality of their data insights and their understanding of what founders, boards, and investors need have been instrumental in helping us scale smartly across Europe. This partnership has given us the clarity and confidence to pursue our vision of becoming the leading digital fundraising platform for nonprofits and empowering changemakers so they can focus on what they do best: creating impact."
Marco Zaugg, founder and CEO @ RaiseNow
Looking ahead, RaiseNow continues to solidify its leading position in the European digital fundraising market. With a strong capital foundation, clear operational metrics, and continued product innovation, the company is well-positioned to help tens of thousands more organizations transform their fundraising and maximize their social impact. The partnership with Lendity exemplifies how strategic capital, combined with intelligence and expertise, can accelerate mission-driven technology companies toward their full potential.
About Lendity
Lendity provides growth capital and intelligence for technology companies, combining flexible financing with data-driven insights to help businesses scale efficiently. Our deep understanding of SaaS, recurring revenue models, and technology business dynamics enables us to partner with growing companies at critical inflection points.
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