#12: Bootstrapped Giving App Achieves $3B in Donations - Wale Mafolasire, Founder and CEO of Givelify

Wale Mafolasire (pronounced Wall-AY Mafo-LAH-shee-ray) is the founder and CEO of Givelify, the most popular online giving platform and mobile donation app. Wale grew up in Nigeria before coming to Georgia to study computer science at Columbus State University. Wale started Givelify in 2013 with his co-founders after experiencing the difficulties of making donations at his local church and other non-profits. He and his team created Givelify to make giving easy and rewarding for generous people while helping non-profits reach a wider audience of donors who ignore traditional donation processes.

Givelify is now the most popular online and mobile giving platform with an easy donation app and a powerful donation management system. Over one million people have donated $3 billion to 55,000 churches, non-profits, and other causes using Givelify. Givelify has over 90 employees in offices in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Dallas, Texas, with more remote employees all over the world. Givelify is bootstrapped and has not taken outside venture capital investment.

In this episode, Wale talks about he started the company with friends from college in 2013, trying unsuccessfully to raise venture funding to launch the company, how his own pastor was the first Givelify customer, and growing to over 55,000 non-profits with the most popular giving app on the iPhone and Google app stores. He also talks about how generosity and supporting non-profits can be enabled with a frictionless experience to make donating a more common practice all over the world.