PHILADELPHIA & CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–WizeHive, provider of a leading SaaS platform – Zengine – which enables full lifecycle management of grants, scholarships, and fellowships, today announced a growth capital investment from private equity firm LLR Partners. The capital will be used to help drive continued growth at WizeHive, accelerate the advancement of the Zengine platform, and strengthen customer success infrastructure.
Grant making is central to the missions of tens of thousands of mission-driven organizations, and yet many are using inadequate or outmoded tools to manage these critical programs. WizeHive helps hundreds of corporations, foundations, government entities, universities, and other non-profits enhance and accelerate the impact of their programs by making it easier to engage applicants, minimizing tedious and less productive activities for program administrators, and delivering reporting that maintains compliance and provides powerful insights.
“Charitable giving rose to record levels in recent years, totaling $450 billion in 2019, and grant making continued to accelerate in 2020 for COVID-19 relief,” said Cheng Li, Vice President at LLR Partners. “We expect further momentum post-COVID, especially as companies focus more on social responsibility and community impact. Technology providers like WizeHive are increasingly seen as essential partners for foundations, corporations, and other entities to enable increasing volume of grant activity, simplify the process, and improve reporting.”
Through Zengine, WizeHive offers clients a high-level of configurability in a quick to deploy platform – eliminating the need for organizations to either force fit their mission to rigid software or incur the time and cost of a customized solution. Investments will help accelerate growth efforts including advancement in the platform around ease of use and reporting, along with enabling clients’ immediate and long-term success.
“LLR has been the go-to partner for growth stage SaaS companies in our home Philadelphia market and across the U.S. for over 20 years,” said Carl Guarino, CEO of WizeHive. “I am thrilled that WizeHive is now in the position to leverage LLR’s knowledge of our space and their value creation resources to help scale our growth efforts, accelerate the enhancement of our platform, and expand efforts to drive long-term customer success.”
“Carl and his team are highly experienced leaders with backgrounds in growing technology businesses both organically and through M&A. We are excited for this opportunity to partner with WizeHive and to bring much-needed technology and insights to the underserved non-profit sector to help accelerate and amplify their missions,” said David Reuter, partner at LLR Partners.
Previous investors in WizeHive include Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Gabriel Investments, Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, and Robin Hood Ventures.
About WizeHive
WizeHive provides a secure, cloud-platform – ZengineTM – along with industry-leading services and support to mission-based organizations including corporate social responsibility teams, government entities, universities, and other non-profits. WizeHive’s technology enables the application, review, and full lifecycle management of the grants, scholarships, fellowships, and other awards that lie at the heart of their clients’ missions. The highly configurable nature of Zengine offers unmatched flexibility and adaptability to support each client’s unique mission objectives and processes. Learn more at www.wizehive.com.
About LLR Partners
LLR Partners is a lower middle market private equity firm investing in technology and healthcare businesses. We collaborate with our portfolio companies to identify and execute on key growth initiatives and help create long-term value. Founded in 1999 and with more than $5 billion raised across six funds, LLR is a flexible provider of equity capital for growth, recapitalizations and buyouts. Learn more at www.llrpartners.com.
