This Scandivian startup just raised $2 million to help churches go digital
ChurchDesk is a cloud platform and mobile app that helps church staff and volunteers run things more efficiently using a shared intranet, digital calendar, file manager, and messaging system for emails and text messages. It also offers a content management system (CMS) to help staff organise and design the church's website.
Founder Christian Steffenson, whose mother is a pastor, launched the company in 2012. Mangrove Capital Partners' Michael Jackson wrote that his firm has several reasons for leading the round, including the huge market that Christian's solution taps into.
Here's part of his post on Medium: "As part of our research, we look for hidden gems that initially appear to serve niches Our first impression looking at churches were indeed that they were a niche - in fact, a dying niche. Nothing can be further from the truth. Churchgoers of all denominations are growing."
"People are perhaps not attending weekly sermons, but the church forms a central part of the lives of many people across many cultures. Customers of ChurchDesk are enjoying a new collaboration and a new level of engagement that brings the community even closer together. A market which turns over many billions every year - just on internal costs."
ChurchDesk claims that over 1,000 churches use its platform across Denmark, Germany and the UK. That amounts to about 10,000 staff running over 50,000 church and community events every month.
Former Just Eat executive Klaus Nyengaard also took part in the round, along with Danish accelerator Accelerace. The company will use the new funding to expand its marketing team, add new features to ChurchDesk platform, and drive adoption in more churches across Europe.