ALLOVUE: $800K to Baltimore, MD-based Allovue in a seed round from the Maryland Technology Center (TEDCO), Baltimore Angels and Shulman Ventures. Founded exactly one year ago by former Baltimore City teacher Jess Gartner, Allovue's flagship product, Balance, that helps district officials and administrators track and analyze the impact of school spending on educational outcomes.
"Many large districts have very robust backend accounting system for spending, but the reporting features put out data in a raw format" that is difficult to make sense of, Gartner tells EdSurge. "We are building a front-end system to provide a better end user experience that helps people at all levels of the district make sense of the financial data."
Gartner points to Mint.com as the inspiration. "What they have done for consumer spending, we are trying to do for schools," she says. "We want to give administrators the ability to correlate where they're putting their dollars to where they're seeing outcomes for teachers and students."
Gartner has piloted the tool with five schools in Baltimore and will begin working with a number of local districts this year. With the funding, she's looking to add to her team of seven and expand Allovue's tools beyond financial management to help districts track and manage other resources like human capital.
