Allovue raises $4M, adds to education budget tools

Baltimore edfintech startup Allovue raised $4 million in funding to support growth of its tools to help K-12 school district and state education departments to help administrators budget, manage and evaluate spending.

The Series A-2 round was led by Macquarie Capital. 

Founded by former Baltimore teacher Jess Gartner in 2013 on a belief that better management of finances can directly affect students for the better, Remington-based Allovue makes a platform called Balance that provides access and analysis of financial data. In 2017, the company released added a product to the platform called Balance Budget, and recently made upgrades that will help administrators implement specific budgeting strategies, said Marketing Manager Autumn Dorsey.

“Allovue is unique in its ability to serve a wide array of education constituents. It is supportive of principals, who have increasing budget autonomy, as well as administrators and taxpayers, who are more accountable than ever due to heightened transparency,” Larry Handen, head of principal investing and private capital markets for the Americas, Europe and Asia at Macquarie Capital, said in a statement. “The cost and time efficiencies that Allovue delivers benefit the entire education system, and most importantly, students benefit from sustained funding of the most impactful programs.”

The company is seeing demand for financial technology as schools seek to comply with new reporting requirements set out by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Last year, Allovue teamed with nonprofit Education Resource Strategies to create a tool called ACES to help with specific expenditures.

Allovue has raised a total of $13 million, including $7 million in Series A funding.

Following the funding, the company will be looking to add five full-time employees to its team of 25 people, Dorsey said.