After raising $2.5 million from angel investors last year, social activism and campaign-organizing site The Point has closed a $4.8 million series A financing from New Enterprise Associates. The idea behind the site is to create campaigns around social action—it could be donating to a political candidate, boycotting a company’s products, or simply organizing a meetup—but nobody is required to actually do anything until the cause reaches a pre-determined tipping point, or critical mass, of supporters. It is designed to focus activism or community involvement in campaigns that actually have a chance of succeeding. Although, there are some crazy causes, like this one to raise $10 billion to build a winter dome over Chicago.
The startup is based in Chicago. It plans to make money from ads targeted to each cause/topic. I first wrote about The Point when it launched last November.
Here is a video of founder and CEO Andrew Mason explaining why he started the site: