Bright Funds

What Bright Funds does

Bright Funds was a workplace giving and volunteering software company founded in 2012 and headquartered in Oakland, California. The company operated a unified platform that combined corporate grants management, employee giving programs, and employee volunteering coordination into a single solution, addressing the fragmentation that HR and CSR teams face when administering donations, volunteer hours, and corporate grants across separate systems. The company served two primary horizontal customer segments: corporate employers seeking to operate workplace giving and CSR programs, and nonprofit organizations receiving donations routed through those programs.

The platform's primary functional value was consolidating employee giving, corporate grants, and volunteer program administration into a unified software layer, with separate registration and management pathways for nonprofits. No proprietary technology stack, AI/ML capabilities, or patents were disclosed in available source material, suggesting a primarily workflow and SaaS-based architecture rather than a technology-differentiated offering. The company maintained a small team of 11-50 employees and raised approximately $2.95M in seed and early-stage funding between 2013 and 2017 from investors including AGO Partners, Bloomberg Beta, Wellspring Growth Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Access Ventures, Hattery, and TechFellow Fund.

In 2025, Bright Funds was acquired by Submittable, a grants management platform, with the combined entity now offering a comprehensive suite spanning corporate grants, employee giving, and employee volunteering. Pricing, revenue model, named enterprise customers, and contract structures were not publicly disclosed, indicating a B2B SaaS model with undisclosed commercial terms. Post-acquisition, the Bright Funds brand is positioned as part of Submittable's broader corporate social impact software suite.

Name

Bright Funds

Website

https://hello.brightfunds.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2012

Operating status

Acquired

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Bright Funds operated a workplace giving, employee volunteering, and corporate grants management software platform serving corporate employers and nonprofit organizations. Founded in 2012 and acquired by Submittable in 2025 to form a combined corporate social impact software suite.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Workplace Giving and CSR Software

NAICS

Grantmaking and Giving Services (81321), Other Grantmaking and Giving Services (813219), Grantmaking Foundations (813211), Grantmaking and Giving Services (8132)

SIC

Services-Management Consulting Services (8742)

akta.pro primary industry

Corporate Foundations & CSR Grantmaking (BPAGAKAC)

akta.pro secondary industries

Community Foundations (BPAGAKAB), Grantmaking & Philanthropic Funds (Institutional Donors) (BPADAOAB), Scholarships, Grants & Donor-Funded Awards Management (EDALAJAB)

Keywords

• Workplace giving software
• Employee volunteering platform
• Corporate grants management
• CSR software solutions
• Nonprofit donation management

Headquarters

HQ city

Oakland

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Core offering

Bright Funds provides a software platform that enables corporate employers to operate workplace giving programs, manage corporate grants, and coordinate employee volunteering. The platform is sold to HR and CSR teams at companies seeking to centralize employee donations, volunteer hours, and corporate grants administration, and it also supports nonprofit registration and management as receiving organizations. Following the 2025 acquisition, the offering is now part of Submittable's comprehensive corporate giving and grants suite.

Product overview

Bright Funds is a unified workplace giving and volunteering software platform. The company has recently been acquired by Submittable, and the combined entity now offers a comprehensive suite of corporate grants, employee giving, and employee volunteering software solutions as a single integrated platform.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Bright Funds Workplace Giving and Volunteering Platform Unified workplace giving, corporate grants, and employee volunteering software platform for corporate employers (HR and CSR teams) and the nonprofits that receive donations through it; now integrated into Submittable's corporate giving suite following the 2025 acquisition.

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights3 records

Emerging players

• Givinga: Givinga is a workplace giving and corporate philanthropy platform that offers donation processing and matching gift capabilities comparable to Bright Funds' employee giving functionality.
• Millie: Millie is an emerging employee giving and volunteering platform targeting mid-market employers, with a comparable product focus on workplace giving and CSR engagement.
• Deed: Deed is a workplace giving platform that connects employees with nonprofits through corporate donation matching and volunteering programs, targeting a similar CSR buyer segment as Bright Funds.

Broad incumbents

• Blackbaud: Blackbaud is a large nonprofit and CSR software suite vendor (parent of YourCause) that competes in adjacent categories of grants management, donor management, and corporate philanthropy software.
• Salesforce.org (Philanthropy Cloud): Salesforce.org's Philanthropy Cloud is an enterprise employee giving and volunteering platform built on Salesforce, competing with Bright Funds for global corporate CSR accounts.
• Submittable: Submittable is a broader grants and submission management platform that acquired Bright Funds; it overlaps in corporate grants workflows and serves adjacent CSR and nonprofit customers.

Direct peers

• Goodworld (now part of Frontstream): Frontstream (formerly Goodworld) provides workplace giving, donation processing, and CSR software to enterprise customers, directly competing with Bright Funds in the same product category.
• Benevity: Benevity is the leading enterprise CSR software platform for corporate giving, volunteering, and grant management, directly competing with Bright Funds in the same customer segment and product category.
• Kindsight (formerly CanadaHelps' CSR platform, now part of Bonterra): Kindsight is a workplace giving and employee engagement platform serving enterprise CSR teams, offering overlapping functionality in employee giving, volunteering, and corporate grants.
• YourCause (a Blackbaud company): YourCause is an enterprise CSR platform for employee engagement, corporate giving, and volunteering, now part of Blackbaud, and serves the same HR/CSR buyer as Bright Funds.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks4 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/brightfunds
• Facebookfacebook.com/brightfunds
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/bright-funds

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds6 records

Investors9 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Bright Funds