Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

NationBuilder Community Organizing Platform Raises Another $8M

NationBuilder, which makes a set of online tools for community organizing, has raised a Series B round of venture funding consisting of $8 million from Omidyar Network and previous investor Andreessen Horowitz.

The Los Angeles-based company got its start with customer relationship management software for politicians. It’s now also used by businesses, nonprofits and governments.

The NationBuilder tool set includes website creation and updating, supporter databases, invoice management and ways to reach people, like email and text messaging. The key draw is to do all of that simply and from one place.

After breaking into other markets when election season finished last year, NationBuilder said it now has 2,500 paying customers. Users have raised $110 million and recruited 280,000 volunteers over the past two years.

NationBuilder CEO Jim Gilliam is known for a speech that became a viral video called “The Internet Is My Religion.” He previously started online movements around his own double lung transplant and documentaries for Brave New Films.

We last wrote about NationBuilder just over a year ago, the last time it raised money — $6.25 million led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Ben Horowitz. At the time, the company also added Causes co-founders Joe Green and Sean Parker, with both joining the board and Green taking the role of president.

Green has since left his day-to-day role and founded FWD.us, the immigration lobbying group closely associated with his former college roommate, Mark Zuckerberg, that has already attracted much controversy, with Green in particular being singled out.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus