About Us

Our Vision

At BigTent, we believe that volunteer-powered groups are the backbone of strong, real life-communities. But today more than ever, we've found that keeping up with the groups we care about can be a challenge.

We know that community leaders need to track members, events, news, and even dues. We also know that members have countless demands on their time -- and many are involved in multiple groups.

Our goal is simple: To connect people with the communities they care about, making it easy for groups and their members to participate, communicate, and organize. All for free, and all from a single home on the Web.

We can help you:

• Consolidate all your community information in one place, under a single "big tent"
• Use our free Web tools to organize and manage your group with ease
• Rest easy knowing your group's personal information is private and secure
• Provide fun new ways for your members to connect and participate

Our Groups

We have thousands of groups nationwide. Most of them existed in the real world before coming to BigTent. Some had previous homes on the Web, like their own website or a Yahoo! Group.

Groups migrate to BigTent because they need:

• All resources - calendars, discussions, reviews, member profiles - in one place
• To automate their membership renewal process
• The ability to track volunteers for activities and events
• Scalability, and a way to keep close member relations as they grow and add subgroups
• A technology partner who anticipates their needs, solves problems, and talks to them

Our Story

BigTent was born out of co-founders Nicholas Chim and Laney Whitcanack's desire to build a free, easy way for trusted groups to connect online. Laney wanted cheap and easy-to-use software to support The Princess Project, a non-profit she founded to provide free prom dresses to high school girls who can't afford them. Nicholas wanted to help a co-worker more easily access information from her community mothers group.

Seeing an obvious need in the marketplace, Chim and Whitcanack decided to create a new online tool for organizing groups. In early 2006 they founded BigTent, a technology company that provides free, Web-based software to community groups.

Today, BigTent is a venture capital-funded company with a seasoned leadership team and groups in every state in the nation. BigTent helps real-world communities share, communicate, and organize online and in-person by providing intuitive, free group management tools.