By Business & Finance 
Pictured: Brendan Finucane, CEO and Founder of Ecanvasser
Business & Finance highlights an up-and-coming start-up making waves in its industry. In this article we look at Ecanvasser, software for organising effective community outreach and field canvassing.
What is it?
Ecanvasser is a software for organising effective community outreach and field canvassing. It’s been designed for campaigns and organizations who engage communities through real conversations. Powerful mobile apps let organisers capture conversations when discussing issues with people on the ground and it is so simple that it helps anyone make an impact. You can measure your success by gaining insights on operation activity, effectiveness and campaign team performance.
Who’s behind it?
Brendan Finucane is CEO and Founder of Ecanvasser. He studied Business Information Systems in University College Cork where, having always been passionate about history and politics, he became involved in political campaigns and canvassing for various causes of importance. It was during one of his canvassing excursions whilst he was still in college that he first developed the concept for Ecanvasser. After going door to door and forgetting his pen and paper while out and about, the idea to build an app that would enable better campaign organisation and execution was born.
He began developing a simple android app to demonstrate the potential for the concept. Encouraged by the head of his Local Enterprise Office, Brendan decided to join incubator programme ‘Ignite’ in UCC after graduating. It was a time of trial and error. Brendan spent the entire summer working in a windowless office, developing the concept and infrastructure for Ecanvasser. Having started with just one person, today Ecanvasser has grown into a company with a significant global footprint that powers campaigns across five continents, engaging with millions of voters.
How is it funded?
Ecanvasser is backed by angel investors and has raised €3.5 million to date.
Future plans?
People talking to one another is central to how Ecanvasser works. Over the past 12 months or so this has been heavily impacted by COVID-19 and social distancing measures. In particular, Q2 2020 was a difficult time where we needed to look strategically at the business.
After recovering from the initial impact, we revisited the medium term plan, and gathered as a management team and tested every assumption. As a result, we have started a significant product development project to move the focus away from a sole face-to-face setting. A number of key hires are being made over the next 6 months in the areas of product and marketing.
