PlanPerfect, strategic planning and risk management software built specifically for nonprofits, announces the closing of a strategic funding round backed by three experienced investors, including Nexus3 Capital, the investment arm of Nexus3.

PlanPerfect guides nonprofit leaders and boards from the first stakeholder survey to a finished strategic plan. The platform includes progress dashboards, integrated risk management, and the PlanPerfect AI advisor that uses an organization's own information to support decision-making, scenario planning, and document creation.

The investment will allow PlanPerfect to serve more organizations and expand its work with foundations, associations, consultants, and other partners supporting the social sector.

Nexus3 was drawn to PlanPerfect because the company reflects several themes Nexus3 looks for in early-stage technology businesses: a specific vertical market, founders with deep domain expertise, a workflow that is important but underserved by modern software, and a clear opportunity for AI to make the product more valuable over time. For nonprofit leaders and boards, strategic planning affects governance, funding, risk, staffing, reporting, and long-term organizational resilience. PlanPerfect gives that work a structured operating platform rather than leaving it spread across documents, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools.

For PlanPerfect Co-Founder Sophia Shaw, raising capital brought together two parts of her professional life that had long seemed separate. Shaw has spent four decades working throughout the nonprofit sector as a chief executive, trustee, board president, donor, volunteer, consultant, and educator. Much of that work involved asking people to support organizations and ideas they believed should exist. Raising capital for PlanPerfect required a different financial model, but she found that the underlying decision was similar.

"For most of my career, I thought about fundraising in the context of philanthropy," Shaw said. "Through this process, I realized that both donors and investors are deciding whether to place their resources behind an idea, a team, and a future they believe in. Our investors believe that nonprofits deserve better planning software, and they believe PlanPerfect is fulfilling that need. We are proud to have earned their trust."

Shaw and Co-Founder Adam Wolford met at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in 2020, where Shaw was an adjunct professor of social impact and director of the Kellogg Board Fellows program. Wolford was a full-time MBA student and Kellogg Board Fellow. In 2023, Shaw approached Wolford about collaborating on a consulting project for the Catalina Island Conservancy. The collaboration led to additional projects. 

Their early work revealed a recurring problem: nonprofits were spending time and money developing strategic plans, but many lacked the tools and internal structure needed to put those plans into practice. A plan might be approved by the board and presented to staff, but it could quickly end up on a shelf as leaders returned to the daily work of running the organization.

Shaw and Wolford founded PlanPerfect in 2024 to give nonprofit leaders and boards a better way to plan, make decisions, manage risk, and monitor progress.

"Nonprofits doing some of the most important work in the world have been left behind by technology," Wolford said. "They are expected to plan carefully, govern responsibly, report to funders, and respond to change, but they are often doing that work with disconnected documents and spreadsheets. PlanPerfect gives the organization one place to build its plan, consider risk, establish responsibility, implement their goals and objectives, and see how progress is being made."

PlanPerfect now supports nearly 100 organizations in 29 states and four countries, including nonprofits, schools, associations, foundations, and consultants supporting the social sector.

The platform takes organizations through stakeholder surveys, analysis, plan creation, risk management, progress tracking, and reporting. Its dashboards provide staff and board members with a current view of organizational priorities, progress, and risk. The PlanPerfect Advisor uses information provided by the organization to assist with scenario planning, decision-making, and document creation, including drafting annual reports.

"Most nonprofit leaders already understand their organizations, their communities, and the problems they need to solve," Wolford said. "What is often missing is a structured way to get that knowledge into a strategic plan that the organization can execute. We want every client to finish with a plan its board can stand behind, its staff can use, and its donors can fund."

"PlanPerfect is a strong fit for Nexus3 because it is focused on a specific market with a real, recurring workflow problem," said Tim Stojka, Nexus3 CEO. "Sophia and Adam understand how nonprofit organizations actually plan, govern, manage risk, and report progress. That kind of founder-market fit is hard to manufacture. We believe PlanPerfect can become an important operating platform for nonprofits, and we are excited to support the company as it expands its product, AI capabilities, and partner programs."

As part of the investment, Nexus3 Capital expects to support PlanPerfect with product, AI, and go-to-market experience as the company continues expanding its planning, risk management, and advisor capabilities.

PlanPerfect will use the capital to expand its product and engineering teams, strengthen the PlanPerfect Advisor, deepen the integration between strategic planning and enterprise risk management, and expand support for clients and partners.

The company will also continue developing programs for foundations, associations, and other partners that want to help a group of nonprofits complete a consistent planning process. These programs give participating organizations a shared planning framework while allowing each nonprofit to develop a strategic plan tailored to its own priorities, stakeholders, risks, and goals.

"Organizations that plan professionally achieve more," Shaw said. "Nonprofit leaders should have access to the same quality of planning tools that well-resourced companies take for granted. This investment gives us the ability to bring those tools to more organizations and to keep improving them based on what nonprofit leaders and boards tell us they need."

About PlanPerfect

PlanPerfect helps nonprofit leaders and boards build, implement, and monitor strategic plans through stakeholder engagement, enterprise risk management, implementation tracking, board reporting, and AI-powered guidance.

PlanPerfect was founded in 2024 by Sophia Shaw, former president and CEO of the Chicago Botanic Garden and a longtime nonprofit leader and educator, and Adam Wolford, a technology, product, and strategy executive with experience at Accenture, Deloitte, and growing technology companies.

PlanPerfect equips nonprofits to scale their impact and navigate change.

Learn more at planperfect.co.

About Nexus3 Capital

Nexus3 Capital is the investment arm of Nexus3, a technology company building and operating AI-enabled software businesses in focused vertical markets. Nexus3 includes NX3 Labs, its research and development arm, and a growing group of operating and portfolio companies.

Nexus3 Capital partners with founders building early-stage technology companies where deep industry knowledge, proprietary workflows, and AI can combine to create better software for underserved markets. The team brings capital, operating experience, AI product expertise, and company-building support to help founders turn domain-specific software into durable businesses.

Learn more at nexus3.ai.