Omaze

Online fundraising platform offering prizes and experiences to support nonprofits.

Website: https://www.omaze.com/

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Field Value
Name Omaze
Tagline Online fundraising platform offering prizes and experiences to support nonprofits
Headquarters Culver City, CA, USA
Founded 2012
Stage Series C
Business Model B2C
Industry Consumer / Charitable Fundraising
Technology Type Software (Non-AI)
Geography North America, with operations in UK and Germany
Growth Profile Venture Scale
Founders Matt Pohlson, Ryan Cummins
Funding Label $50M+
Total Disclosed Approximately $124M across Series A, B, and C [Business Wire, July 2015] [TechCrunch, August 2020] [PRNewswire, October 2021]

Links

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Executive Summary

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Omaze runs a consumer-facing prize draw platform that bundles charitable giving with the chance to win luxury homes, travel, and experiences, a model that has produced one of the larger venture-backed footprints in digital philanthropy [LinkedIn] [Crunchbase]. Founded in 2012 in Culver City by Matt Pohlson and Ryan Cummins, the company began with celebrity-fronted experience campaigns before expanding into mass-market sweepstakes for homes and lifestyle prizes [TechCrunch, July 2015] [TechCrunch, August 2020]. Its differentiation rests less on technology than on the curation of headline-grade prizes, the legal scaffolding required to run cross-border sweepstakes, and the partnership pipeline with more than 350 charities cited across third-party sources [LeadIQ]. The founding team has been public-facing since the Series A, and Matt Pohlson remains co-founder and CEO according to multiple secondary databases [Growjo] [Comparably]. Capital has come from a recognizable roster including FirstMark Capital, Tornante Company, Vayner/RSE, Telstra Ventures, and Moore Strategic Ventures, which led the $85M Series C [PRNewswire, October 2021]. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the questions investors should track are the durability of the UK and Germany expansion, the cadence of high-ticket home draws (which carry meaningful prize-fulfillment risk, as disclosed in the Miami draw's $1.8M cash alternative clause), and whether 2025 leadership additions translate into a renewed growth phase [Omaze]. A current slate of six open roles spanning engineering, data, marketing, and business development suggests continued operating investment rather than a wind-down posture [Greenhouse, 2026].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Crunchbase, TechCrunch, PRNewswire, and the company's own properties.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis Value
Stage Series C
Business Model B2C consumer sweepstakes with charitable beneficiary structure
Industry / Vertical Online fundraising / consumer philanthropy
Technology Type Software (Non-AI)
Geography US, UK, Germany
Growth Profile Venture Scale
Founding Team Matt Pohlson (CEO), Ryan Cummins
Funding $50M+ disclosed; approximately $124M cumulative across rounds

Company Overview

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Omaze was founded in 2012 by Matt Pohlson and Ryan Cummins after, by Pohlson's own retelling in subsequent press, the founders observed how a single high-profile charity auction experience could move dramatically more dollars than a traditional appeal [Forbes, November 2020]. The company is headquartered in Culver City, California, and describes itself across its US, UK, and German properties as an online fundraising platform that lets anyone enter for a chance to win prizes while supporting a designated nonprofit beneficiary [Omaze] [LinkedIn].

The milestone arc, as captured in primary press, runs as follows. In July 2015, Omaze closed a $9M Series A led by FirstMark Capital, the round that brought the company into mainstream tech press as a "democratized fundraising platform" [Business Wire, July 2015] [TechCrunch, July 2015]. By August 2020, the company had broadened beyond celebrity experience campaigns into a wider catalog of prizes and raised a $30M Series B [TechCrunch, August 2020]. In October 2021, an $85M Series C led by Moore Strategic Ventures marked the company's largest disclosed round and coincided with public statements from Pohlson about a long-term goal of channeling a billion dollars annually to good causes [PRNewswire, October 2021] [Forbes, November 2020]. International expansion into the UK and Germany is described directly on the company's regional sites, and a 2025 leadership addition ("Tim joined Omaze in 2025 to help lead the next phase of global growth") is referenced on the leadership page [Omaze].

Cumulative dollars raised for charity is the metric Omaze emphasizes most heavily in recruiting and PR materials. Greenhouse postings dated 2026 reference "over $150M" driven to 350 charity partners, while earlier podcast and press references cited a $130M figure, suggesting steady but not explosive year-over-year growth in the cumulative number [Greenhouse, 2026].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Business Wire, TechCrunch, PRNewswire, and the company website.

Product and Technology

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The consumer-facing product is a structured sweepstakes catalog. Each campaign pages a hero prize (a Miami home, a Switzerland trip, a Sydney and Gold Coast getaway, a PlayStation 5 console donated by an actor) against a named charitable beneficiary, with entry tiers, official rules, and, in the case of physical-asset prizes, an explicit cash alternative [Omaze]. The Miami Dream House product page, for example, discloses an $1,800,000 cash alternative paid in twelve monthly $150,000 installments if the winner declines or if the sponsor cannot deliver the home [PUBLIC] [Omaze]. That structural detail matters because it both caps Omaze's downside on prize fulfillment and signals the legal sophistication required to run multi-jurisdiction sweepstakes at scale.

Underneath the catalog sits a fairly conventional consumer e-commerce and CRM stack. Open job postings reference a Mobile Engineering Lead, a Data Engineer, and a CRM Manager (Maternity Cover) role, which together suggest an in-house mobile experience, a centralized analytics pipeline, and an active lifecycle marketing motion (inferred from job postings) [PUBLIC] [Greenhouse, 2026]. The company does not publicly hold itself out as an AI company, and the structured technology classification is software, non-AI [PRIVATE].

Differentiation is less about software primitives and more about three operational assets: prize sourcing (homes, travel, celebrity-donated items), the regulatory and compliance work to run lawful sweepstakes in the US, UK, and Germany, and the influencer and charity partnership pipeline that distributes campaigns. The company's own description across its sites repeatedly frames the model as a connector among "influencers, nonprofits and donors," and that three-sided framing is the closest thing to a stated moat in public materials [LinkedIn] [LeadIQ].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Omaze product pages, Greenhouse postings, and LinkedIn descriptions.

Market Research and Opportunity

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The market that matters for Omaze is the intersection of consumer entertainment spend and charitable giving, two pools that historically have not converted into one another efficiently. No third-party TAM report specific to prize-led online fundraising appears in the cited research, so this section relies on directional indicators from primary and secondary sources rather than a sized market figure.

The demand side is anchored by a long-running structural fact: traditional charitable giving in developed markets has been roughly flat as a share of disposable income for decades, while consumer willingness to pay for entertainment, lottery products, and experience-based purchases has grown. Omaze's pitch, as articulated by Pohlson in Forbes, is that pairing a lottery-style prize with a charitable beneficiary converts entertainment spend into philanthropic capital that would not otherwise materialize [Forbes, September 2020] [Forbes, November 2020]. The cited cumulative figure of more than $150M raised for 350+ charities, while company-sourced, is consistent with that thesis [Greenhouse, 2026] [LeadIQ].

Adjacent and substitute markets include traditional charity auctions (Charitybuzz, BiddingForGood), state and national lotteries with charitable allocations (notably the UK's Postcode Lottery and various Health Lottery formats), and crowdfunding platforms with social or cause overlays. Each carves off a portion of the same wallet. The most relevant macro tailwind is the regulated normalization of online prize-led fundraising in the UK and parts of the EU, which has produced a viable home-prize-draw category that did not exist a decade ago and into which Omaze has explicitly expanded [Omaze]. The most relevant macro headwind is regulatory: sweepstakes law varies by US state and by country, and prize fulfillment for high-value real estate carries reputational risk if a property cannot be delivered as advertised, which is why the cash-alternative clause is standard practice [Omaze].

Cited claim Figure Source
Cumulative raised for charity "over $150M" [Greenhouse, 2026]
Charity partners served 350+ [LeadIQ]
Series C size $85M [PRNewswire, October 2021]
Operating geographies US, UK, Germany [Omaze]

Analyst takeaway: the absence of a named third-party TAM report for prize-led digital fundraising is itself informative. Omaze is operating in a category that is large in aggregate (consumer entertainment plus philanthropy) but undersized as a discrete analyst-tracked vertical, which means category leadership is achievable but category framing is something Omaze has to do for itself.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Demand drivers corroborated across Forbes and company materials; no independent TAM figure was located in the cited research.

Competitive Landscape

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Omaze sits at the consumer-facing, prize-led end of a charitable-giving market that also contains traditional auction houses, postcode and charity lotteries, and crowdfunding platforms.

Company Positioning Stage / Funding Notable Differentiator Source
Omaze Prize-led online fundraising with hero prizes (homes, experiences) tied to charity beneficiaries Series C, ~$124M disclosed Home and experience prize catalog plus US/UK/DE compliance footprint [PRNewswire, October 2021] [Omaze]
Charitybuzz Online charity auction marketplace, celebrity experiences Acquired (Charity Network) Auction format, deep celebrity inventory [PUBLIC] structured facts
Prizeo Sweepstakes-style fundraising, often celebrity-fronted Acquired into Charity Network Earlier mover in celebrity sweepstakes [PUBLIC] structured facts
BiddingForGood Online auction platform for nonprofit fundraisers Private Long-tail nonprofit auctions, lower price points [PUBLIC] structured facts
One Country Country-music-themed prize draws benefiting causes Private Audience-segment focus (country music fans) [PUBLIC] structured facts
CharityStar Prize draw platform for nonprofits Private Smaller-scale prize draws, nonprofit-led [PUBLIC] structured facts

The segment map breaks into three groups. Incumbent auction platforms (Charitybuzz, BiddingForGood) sell the same celebrity and experience inventory but in an auction format that caps participation at the high-bidder end and historically converts a smaller audience into a larger per-transaction donation. Direct sweepstakes peers (Prizeo, CharityStar, One Country) share Omaze's mechanic but operate at smaller scale or within narrower audience verticals. Adjacent substitutes (national lotteries with charitable allocations, postcode lottery formats in the UK and Netherlands) command vastly larger consumer attention but are tightly regulated and not investable as venture-style targets.

Where Omaze has a defensible edge today: the combination of a multi-year compliance footprint across the US, UK, and Germany, an installed base of more than 350 charity partners, and the operational muscle to deliver multi-million-dollar physical prizes such as homes is genuinely hard to replicate from a standing start [LeadIQ] [Omaze]. That edge is durable as long as the company keeps shipping headline prizes that justify the customer acquisition spend, and perishable if a regional regulator changes the rules of online prize draws or if a single high-profile fulfillment failure erodes trust.

Where Omaze is most exposed: regulated lottery operators in the UK and EU sit in a structurally cheaper customer-acquisition lane because of mass-market broadcast advertising and decades of brand familiarity. Omaze cannot enter the licensed-lottery channel without a different regulatory posture, and it does not own a broadcast distribution asset of its own. A second exposure point is that the celebrity-fronted experience inventory, where Charitybuzz historically had depth, is no longer the company's primary growth surface, which suggests that segment competition is less acute than home-prize competition with regional UK draw operators.

The most plausible 18-month scenario: the winner if home-prize draws continue to scale internationally is Omaze, because its capital base and compliance scaffolding compound across geographies. The loser if a UK regulator tightens prize-draw advertising rules is any operator overweight UK home draws as a share of revenue, which would include Omaze given the prominence of its UK property in public materials [Omaze].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitor identities confirmed by structured facts; relative funding and market-share figures for peers are not independently verified in the cited research.

Opportunity

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If Omaze executes against the international prize-draw opportunity, the prize is becoming the default consumer brand for prize-led charitable giving in English- and German-speaking markets, a category with no entrenched venture-backed leader.

The headline opportunity. The single largest plausible outcome is that Omaze becomes a multi-country consumer brand that consumers think of first when they consider entering a prize draw to support a cause, the equivalent role that the Postcode Lottery occupies in the UK and Netherlands but built on a venture-scaled, digitally native chassis. The cited evidence makes that outcome reachable rather than aspirational: an $85M Series C balance sheet from October 2021, more than 350 charity partners, active operations in three countries, and a stated cumulative fundraising figure that has continued to climb across press cycles [PRNewswire, October 2021] [LeadIQ] [Greenhouse, 2026]. The category itself does not yet have a clear venture-backed winner, which is the precondition for category-defining outcomes.

Growth scenarios.

Scenario What happens Catalyst Why it's plausible
International home-draw rollup Omaze becomes the dominant prize-led fundraising brand across UK, DE, and additional EU markets A successful Germany scale-up validates the playbook for further EU launches UK and Germany operations already disclosed on company sites [Omaze]; Series C capital available to fund market entry [PRNewswire, October 2021]
Charity-partner platformization The 350+ charity partner roster becomes a recurring "campaigns-as-a-service" channel that nonprofits rely on for multi-quarter revenue planning A signed multi-year framework deal with a major national charity federation Existing charity-partner depth is corroborated by multiple third-party sources [LeadIQ]
Premium experience tier revival Celebrity experience and travel prizes rebuild as a higher-margin complement to home draws A high-profile experience campaign with a marquee partner The original 2015 Series A thesis was experience-led, and the Forbes coverage indicates leadership continues to think in those terms [TechCrunch, July 2015] [Forbes, September 2020]

What compounding looks like. The flywheel runs in two directions. On the consumer side, every successful headline prize draw produces winner-reaction content, social proof, and an enlarged email list, all of which lower the customer acquisition cost of the next campaign. On the charity side, every fulfilled campaign produces a case study that makes the next charity partner easier to sign and easier to renew. The Greenhouse postings referencing growing cumulative dollars raised are a directional signal that this loop continues to turn [Greenhouse, 2026]. The data engineering and CRM roles in the current hiring slate suggest the company is investing in the analytics infrastructure required to measure and accelerate that loop (inferred from job postings) [Greenhouse, 2026].

The size of the win. No public market cap comparable maps cleanly onto prize-led digital fundraising, which is itself part of the opportunity. The closest reference points are regulated lottery operators that capitalize in the multiple billions across European public markets and the broader online charitable giving software category where companies such as Classy were acquired for several hundred million dollars. If the international rollup scenario plays out and Omaze achieves consistent cross-border profitability, a strategic outcome in the high hundreds of millions to low billions becomes a defensible reference range (scenario, not a forecast). That outcome requires the company to convert its current $124M (estimated) cumulative funding into durable contribution-margin-positive operations, which is the central question the private half of this report examines.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Scenarios anchored to confirmed funding, geography, and partnership counts; comparable valuations referenced as scenario anchors only.

Sources

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  1. [Business Wire, July 2015] Omaze Announces $9M in Funding Led by FirstMark Capital | https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150715006146/en/Omaze-Announces-9M-Funding-Led-FirstMark-Capital

  2. [TechCrunch, July 2015] Omaze, The Democratized Fundraising Platform, Picks Up $9 Million In Series A | https://techcrunch.com/2015/07/15/omaze-the-democratized-fundraising-platform-picks-up-9-million-in-series-a/

  3. [TechCrunch, August 2020] Omaze raises $30M after expanding beyond celebrity campaigns | https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/13/omaze-series-b/

  4. [Forbes, September 2020] Purpose At Work: How Omaze Reinvented Philanthropy | https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmainwaring/2020/09/09/purpose-at-work-how-omaze-reinvented-philanthropy-to-unlock-exponential-growth-and-impact/

  5. [Forbes, November 2020] Omaze's Matt Pohlson On What Dying Taught Him About Optimism | https://www.forbes.com/sites/afdhelaziz/2020/11/16/omazes-matt-pohlson-on-what-dying-taught-him-about-optimism-and-their-new-goal-of-raising-a-billion-dollars-annually-for-good-causes/

  6. [PRNewswire, October 2021] Omaze Series C announcement (referenced via structured facts)

  7. [Omaze] Company website | https://www.omaze.com/

  8. [Omaze] About Us | https://www.omaze.com/pages/about-us

  9. [Omaze] Leadership Team | https://www.omaze.com/team.html

  10. [Omaze] Careers | https://www.omaze.com/careers.html

  11. [Omaze] Miami Dream House product page | https://www.omaze.com/products/miami-dream-house

  12. [LinkedIn] Omaze company page | https://www.linkedin.com/company/omaze

  13. [LinkedIn] Omaze UK | https://uk.linkedin.com/company/omaze-uk

  14. [Crunchbase] Omaze profile | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omaze/profiles_and_contacts

  15. [ZoomInfo] Omaze overview | https://www.zoominfo.com/c/omaze-inc/354570053

  16. [Growjo] Omaze revenue and competitors | https://growjo.com/company/Omaze

  17. [LeadIQ] Omaze company overview | https://leadiq.com/c/omaze/5a1d8a8f2400002400643fcc

  18. [Greenhouse, 2026] Omaze open roles | https://boards.greenhouse.io/omaze

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