Nordic Startup News Early Stage Startup News From The Nordics
Church communication platform Churchdesk announced on August 20th that they have raised an investment round of almost 14 million. The round was led by venture capital company Mangrove Capital Partners.
By Tina Søndergaard Thorsen
The Danish startup Churchdesk, established in 2012, has raised $2 million dollars from venture capital company Mangrove Capital Partners, which is located in the UK.
Impressive Growth Potential
Mangrove Capital Partners, which previously has invested in Skype, among others, led the investment round, which includes former invvestor and chairman of Churchdesk, Klaus Nyengaard.
He continues, “The Church of England has 20,000 churches and access to huge sums of money, but it is lousy at involving its’ audience. Churches organize all sorts of events and activities, but people are largely unaware of it. We have focused on creating a management system for churches, and now we are expanding it so parishioners can use it to communicate with the pastor and other parishioners. “
Bring churches into the digital age
Churchdesk (formerly KirkeWeb) is a digital solution for churches, which consolidates a number of administrative tasks in a single system. With the tool, customers can use a single interface to take care of the intranet, website, newsletters, etc.
“The key is that the now church staff, volunteers, and parish councils have a single platform on which to collaborate. It contains tools for everyone to make their job easier and faster. It makes the church more focused on users, and it has a significant effect, “said Christian Steffensen, founder and director of Churchdesk, in an earlier interview.
Every day there are 1,200 church employees who log onto the Churchdesk system. In all, Churchdesk has 8000 users associated with 700 churches.
“It can be anything from the daily administration to groups people from the parish council who log on weekly or monthly for updates,” explains Christian Steffensen.
On top of this use, about 58,000 newsletters and 100,000 text messages are sent through the Churchdesk system each month. The figures speak for themselves, and tell the story of an ancient industry that is only now logging onto the digital wave.
Besides Mangrove Capital Partners, there has previously been investment in Churchdesk from Accelerace and Klaus Nyengaard, former CEO of Just Eat, who is both an investor and chairman in the company.
