About Advocora

We built the CRM we wished we'd had.

Advocora started inside a small advocacy nonprofit in Tennessee, after the seventh time its development director exported a CSV at 11pm to thank a major donor. There had to be a better way. So we built it.

Why we exist

Most nonprofit software is condescending.

It assumes you can't handle complexity, so it hides it. It assumes you have a sales team, so it calls your donors "leads." It charges you per seat, per module, per email send — because enterprise pricing works on people who can't fight back.

Advocora is the opposite. We assume you're sharp. We assume your work matters more than ours. And we assume the right move is to give you one tool that does everything well, for a fair flat price, and then get out of your way.

The product reflects that. The Donor Garden treats your donors as people, not pipeline. District fields are first-class because advocacy organizations exist. Memberships are built in because charging $50/month for a "membership module" is rude.

— John & the Advocora team
Operating principles

Four things we won't flinch on.

i.

Your donors are people.

Not leads, not contacts, not records. The product copy reflects this. The UI reflects this. Anything that calls a human a "prospect" gets rewritten.

ii.

Flat pricing, no creep.

One annual fee. Every feature included. Add seats free. If we add a module next year, you get it.

iii.

You own your data.

Full export, anytime, in your format. Migration out is supported with the same care as migration in.

iv.

Mission first, software second.

If a feature is technically clever but doesn't help a nonprofit raise more money or thank more donors, it doesn't ship.

The team

A small, deliberately senior team.

Half of us came out of nonprofits. The other half came out of building serious software. No interns running customer success. No outsourced support.

J
John Bass CEO · Founder
Formerly ED, Helping Hands Project
M
Marisol Reyes Head of Customer
Formerly Development Director, Open Acres
T
Theo Park Head of Engineering
Formerly Stripe, Plaid
A
Ana Whitfield Design
Formerly Linear, Notion
The story so far

From a Friday-night CSV to a CRM serving 200+ nonprofits.

2023 · spring

The seventh CSV.

John, ED at a small Tennessee advocacy nonprofit, exports a CSV at 11pm on a Friday to thank a major donor. He decides this is the last time.

2023 · fall

First version, internal use only.

Built nights and weekends. Tested on real donor data. The Donor Garden is born — originally as a quick-and-dirty heatmap to answer "who haven't I called?"

2024 · summer

First five customers.

Five Tennessee nonprofits — all neighbors and friends — ship their data over. Memberships ship as a feature because two of them needed it that quarter.

2025

Beyond Tennessee.

Advocora opens to nonprofits across the country. 200+ organizations on the platform. Stripe and Mailchimp integrations ship. AI thank-you drafts go live.

2026 · now

Events, voter data, advocacy.

Event management with mobile check-in is in active build. Voter file integration and the Conservative States advocacy bridge ship before year-end. Read more on the homepage roadmap.

Get in touch

Come build the next thing with us.

Demo requests, partnership ideas, job inquiries, or just say hi.