These 21-year-old dropouts raised $2M to build Givefront, a fintech for nonprofits | TechCrunch

The last decade is filled with examples of fintechs that have reshaped how U.S. businesses manage money. Brex simplified corporate cards. Ramp automated spend controls. Mercury rebuilt startup banking. But this wave of financial innovation has largely skipped one major part of the economy: nonprofits.

Givefront, a YC-backed startup founded by 21-year-old Harvard dropout Matt Tengtrakool and UC Berkeley’s Aidan Sunbury, aims to change that. The company is building a financial platform designed specifically for nonprofits, including food banks, animal rescues, non-governmental organizations, churches, and homeowner associations.

Nonprofits generate roughly 6% of the U.S. GDP and contribute trillions of dollars each year, yet most still rely on outdated financial tools. Givefront believes that modern spend management, compliance, and reporting infrastructure — tailored to nonprofit realities — can unlock significant efficiency gains across the sector.

Before starting Givefront, Tengtrakool experimented with a microloan aggregation startup in Nigeria. He later worked inside several nonprofits while studying computer science and statistics at Harvard, including running a few organizations himself. At one nonprofit, he helped grow donations to nearly $500,000. Tengtrakool says these experiences revealed a clear gap that nonprofits face. They have strict regulatory and reporting requirements but lack the tools that modern businesses take for granted.

“I’ve always been interested in financial systems, and this work fits naturally with that,” the chief executive told TechCrunch. “While helping run these nonprofits with a few other students, we realized most of them didn’t have adequate financial tools to ensure compliance or protect their tax-exempt status. The tools they relied on were completely out of sync with what’s considered modern in the startup world.”

Tengtrakool initially built the first version of Givefront to solve those problems internally. What started as tooling for organizations he worked with soon expanded to local nonprofits across the country. Over time, the team narrowed its focus to a unified financial platform built exclusively for registered nonprofit organizations, about 1.9 million of them in the U.S.

Givefront entered Y Combinator Winter 2024 with a broad vision spanning banking and accounting. The team quickly learned, however, that convincing nonprofits to replace accountants or core banking relationships required a slow and painful sales process, ushering a pivot to cards and spend management.

“It’s much easier to get an organization to switch the card they use than to replace their entire accounting stack,” Tengtrakool said.

Although Givefront offers features similar to corporate spend platforms like Ramp and Brex, its exclusive focus on nonprofits sets it apart.

Nonprofits operate under constraints most businesses never face. They manage restricted and unrestricted grants, report spending to donors and foundations, track volunteer expenses, and file IRS Form 990 disclosures. Many nonprofits manage dozens of grants at once, each with its own spending and reporting rules.

Legacy nonprofit systems such as Blackbaud, Sage, and MIP still dominate the market, but they often lack real-time spend controls, modern approval workflows, and seamless integrations with the tools nonprofits increasingly depend on.

Rather than replacing these systems outright, Givefront positions itself as a vertical layer that sits on top of them. The platform integrates with legacy accounting software while adding nonprofit-specific spend controls, receipt capture for audits, grant-based budgeting, and automated reporting.

“Many of the workflows we’re building are deeply specific to how this part of the economy works,” Tengtrakool said. “Our workflows and integrations are a 10x improvement when compared to traditional corporate or spend management tools.”

Givefront generates revenue from card interchange and subscriptions tied to its bill pay feature. Over time, Givefront plans to expand revenues by launching adjacent products, including payroll, banking, budgeting, and potentially investment and endowment management.

Since launching its cards roughly six months ago, Givefront has onboarded hundreds of organizations and reports more than 200% month-over-month growth in revenue and total payment volume. The company expects to serve about 1,000 nonprofits by the end of the year, with a longer-term goal of reaching 5,000 organizations by mid-next year.

Tengtrakool says the team’s youth, which also includes a 17-year-old founding engineer, has served as both an advantage and a challenge so far. Some nonprofit leaders find the team’s age refreshing, while others hesitate to trust financial infrastructure to such a young group.

Churches and religious organizations have driven the strongest adoption, he says. Many rely on volunteer treasurers instead of full-time finance staff, and Givefront’s automation significantly reduces their operational burden.

The company recently closed a $2 million round, led by Script Capital with participation from Y Combinator, C3 Ventures, Phoenix Fund, and angels, including the CEOs of Chariot and Wealthfront. The seed investment will help the company scale distribution, grow its team, and expand its cards and bill pay offerings.