“Brex for Churches”: A Push to Make Charitable Payments Frictionless

Is philanthropic giving the next frontier for payments? A pastor in California has raised $20 million for Overflow, a payments startup he founded, which aims to make charitable giving frictionless.

With the new funding, Overflow is looking to move beyond giving and provide a range of financial services to churches and other nonprofit organizations. CEO Vance Roush spent years as a product manager at Google before turning to the ministry and founding Vive, a church with 11 locations throughout Silicon Valley.

Founded in 2020, Overflow began with the goal of making it easier to donate stock to nonprofits. “Several members wanted to donate stock like Facebook, Google, and Apple stock,” Roush said in 2022. “When I looked into how they can do that, it required multiple forms to physically fill out and fax in. I knew that millennials won’t fax in anything.” When the process resulted in millions in offerings to Vive, Roush decided to make it available to other churches and nonprofits.

The capacities have expanded to the point that donations can be made via ACH, card, DAF, Wills, crypto, Apple Pay, Venmo, CashApp, Google Pay, and PayPal. The timing is right, since online donations have been reported to be growing six times faster than offline giving. Roush has expressed a desire for Overflow to become a “Brex for Churches,” noting that its “goal is to establish a full financial suite of solutions to save church and nonprofit finance teams time and money.”

Expanding the Possibilities of Donations

Overflow says that it enables an average stock donation of $12,979, which is 100 times larger than the national average cash donation. “We grew to facilitate crypto donations and then broadened even further and now support the most comprehensive giving solution in the industry,” according to its blog. “Our platform proudly boasts over 240,000 users and is on track to eclipse 1 million users this year, connecting them with over 450 leading organizations like the Golden State Warriors Community Foundation, Church of the Highlands, VOUS, Zoe Church, Belonging Co, VIVE, Reality SF, and Convoy of Hope.”

The company’s Series B round was led by Wesleyan Investment Foundation, which provides financing to churches and church-related organizations. Uncork, R7, and The GP also invested in the current round of funding. Overflow says that the new investment will help them take the next step toward “our wider mission of becoming the financial operating system for the faith space and beyond.”