Krista Endsley was cruising along as the VP of the nonprofits arm of a monstrously large software company, Sage Group. But when the company decided to divest about eight of its divisions, including the Austin nonprofits office, Endsley was, in many ways, on her own to steer a lifeboat that was just dropped off from an ocean liner.
The spinoff, which would become Abila, creates accounting and fundraising software solutions for nonprofits and associations. When it spun off from Sage and acquired with private investment from Accel-KKR, Abila had about 130 employees. But it was hardly set up to function like a traditional business.
"We had no infrastructure, no accounting system, no IT department, no HR department and no finance department," she said, sitting in a conference room in the company's North Austin offices. "I literally didn't have enough resources at one point to process revenue. Empty seats, chairs, but no bodies."
That was 2013. Abila's executive team dug in, putting on different hats throughout each day to make it work. But they didn't start by filling those financial and HR roles. Instead, Abila acquired another business with offices in Orlando, DC and Chicago, adding 170 employees and 1,500 new customers.
"We went from just servicing nonprofit charitable sector into servicing the association sector," Endsly said. "And it doubled our revenue."
"The organization kind of outgrew some of the execs that were on the team."[/pullquote]
The big shifts and acquisitions, mixed with the company's changing direction, led to high turnover in other offices and a lot of key people leaving the company.
"It was a lot of really, really hard work and we weren't immediately seeing the return," she said. "The organization kind of outgrew some of the execs that were on the team."
Now, Abila calls itself a 30-year-old startup. But it wasn't exactly a startup, either. The company had the momentum of 5,000 customers, 3 or 4 core products and about 130 employees. Its goal was to greatly expand that with innovative products.
Erin Shy, VP of product management and marketing, said Abila put an emphasis on great graphic design and user interface from outside of the nonprofit industry to bring new views to a relatively slow-moving nonprofit world.
"That's a cornerstone of our path for growth in the future," she said. "We want to be known as the most usable, most user-driven design out there."
Abila serves a wide variety of small- to mid-sized associations for realtors, physicians and more. They also have big clients, such as the National Education Association. In total, the company has 8,000 clients, making it one of the largest software providers for nonprofits and associations.
Abila's fundraising product helps nonprofits track donations and helps with fund accounting to ensure all the money is properly accounted for -- one of the primary concerns in the nonprofit world.
"Nonprofits don't have the need to spend extraneously on just innovation for innovation's sake," Shy said. "But where it can solve a real problem that they're having, our aim is to help them navigate that water."
The fundraising software, for example, has engagement scoring that helps nonprofits track donors who have reduced or increased their activity and monitor social media to identify people who are excited and promoting the nonprofits' missions.
Though neither Endsley nor Shy had experience working with nonprofits prior to Sage and Abila, they've come to understand their role in a more intimate way.
"I very rarely sit and talk to an executive director of their mission without at some point crying, because that's what I do," Endsley said. "They're always so incredibly passionate and they're changing the world in such an amazing way. And it's why they exist and we exist to enable them."