VeraData Holdings, the Sarasota-based fundraising intelligence company founded by Michael Peterman, is projecting revenues of $164 million in 2026, up from $120.2 million in 2025, a trajectory that places the company among the fastest-growing data analytics enterprises in the Southeast and reflects nearly two decades of compounding investment in proprietary AI and machine learning infrastructure built exclusively for the nonprofit sector.
The growth story is a financial one. It is also, by any honest measure, a human one.
Behind the revenue projections, the private equity backing from Beringer Capital, the EY Entrepreneur of the Year recognition, and the portfolio of acquisitions that have transformed VeraData into a full-spectrum fundraising intelligence enterprise is a family rooted in Sarasota whose values run deeper than any business milestone. Michael Peterman built a company on the premise that data science applied with genuine commitment to client outcomes could permanently change how nonprofits fund their missions. His wife Michelle has built something equally demanding and equally important closer to home, raising their children and anchoring the family life that makes everything else possible.
“None of this happens in a vacuum,” Michael Peterman says. “The mission that drives this company every day, increasing philanthropic giving, supporting organizations that change lives, that is not separate from who we are at home. It is the same thing.”
The Financial Picture
VeraData’s revenue growth from $120.2 million in 2025 to a projected $164 million in 2026 reflects a company executing on multiple simultaneous growth vectors. The company’s organic business continues to expand as the nonprofit sector’s adoption of data-driven fundraising accelerates. Its acquisition strategy, which has added Faircom New York, Teal Media, and most recently Avalon Consulting to the VeraData Group, has brought new capabilities, new client relationships, and new revenue streams under a consolidated structure. And its performance-based pricing model, unchanged since the company’s founding and structured so that VeraData charges clients only when results are delivered, continues to differentiate the company in a market where most analytics vendors charge on engagement rather than outcome.
VeraData now serves more than 400 nonprofit organizations nationwide that collectively raise more than $1 billion in annual philanthropic giving, supported by a team of more than 240 professionals including over 25 PhD mathematicians. The company has worked with some 900 nonprofits since its founding in 2007.
Beringer Capital, the North American private equity firm specializing in the information, marketing, and technology sectors that made a significant investment in VeraData in November 2022, characterized the company at the time as differentiated by its donor analytics and predictive modeling engine, a unique and defensible data asset, and best-in-class creative and fundraising outreach execution. The revenue trajectory since that investment has validated that characterization.
The Foundation Behind the Growth
What the revenue figures do not capture is the family infrastructure that makes a founder’s obsessive commitment to building something meaningful sustainable over nearly two decades. Michelle Peterman is that infrastructure. A devoted mother and the steady center of the Peterman household, she has created the kind of home environment that allows a CEO running a $120 million company to also be present as a husband and father in a city where the family has genuinely put down roots.
“There is a real parallel between what Michael does for nonprofits and what Michelle does for this family,” says a close colleague of the Petermans. “Both of them are fundamentally in the business of helping people. He does it through data and technology. She does it every single day at home, raising remarkable kids and building a family life that the whole operation runs on. That shared orientation toward service is very much who they are.”
In an era where the mythology of entrepreneurship tends to romanticize the grind at the expense of everything else, the Petermans represent a different model. Michael Peterman is not building VeraData instead of being present for his family. He is doing both, in the same city, with the same level of intention, because Michelle has made it possible.
The Sarasota Commitment
Peterman has been deliberate about keeping VeraData’s operations rooted in Southwest Florida even as the company has grown into a national enterprise. The decision reflects both personal conviction and a business philosophy that treats community investment as a competitive advantage rather than a cost.
“Sarasota is home,” Peterman says. “It is where we raise our family. It is where our team shows up every day. When you build something in a place you actually care about, it changes the way you lead.”
That philosophy has produced measurable outcomes on the talent side as well. VeraData has been recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces, and its ability to attract and retain a team of PhD-level quantitative scientists in Southwest Florida, outside the conventional technology talent hubs, reflects a culture that offers something coastal tech companies with higher compensation packages cannot easily replicate: work with meaning, in a place worth living, near families worth coming home to.
The Petermans have been contributors to the Sarasota community long before the professional accolades arrived. Before the EY recognition, before the $1 billion milestone, before VeraData became a nationally recognized name in nonprofit fundraising intelligence, they were simply a family that chose Sarasota and chose to invest in it.
Peterman was named EY US Entrepreneur of the Year 2026 Florida Award winner, selected from 592 finalists across 17 regional programs nationwide, and advances to the national competition at the EY Strategic Growth Forum in November 2026. He credits the recognition to his team and his family in equal measure.
“You don’t build anything meaningful alone,” he says. “I have an incredible team at VeraData and an incredible partner at home. Sarasota shaped both of those things. I am grateful for all of it.”
About VeraData
VeraData is a data analytics company headquartered in Sarasota, Florida, specializing in AI and machine learning-enabled donor acquisition and retention for the nonprofit sector. Founded in 2007 by Michael Peterman, VeraData serves more than 400 nonprofit organizations nationwide and supports clients that collectively raise more than $1 billion in annual philanthropic giving. VeraData operates as The Donor Science Company. For more information, visit veradata.com.
About Michael and Michelle Peterman
Michael Peterman is the Founder and CEO of VeraData Holdings and the originator of the Donor Science framework. He is the EY US Entrepreneur of the Year 2026 Florida Award winner and advances to the national EY Entrepreneur of the Year program in November 2026. Michelle Peterman is a physician practicing in Sarasota, Florida. The Petermans are longtime residents of the Sarasota community.
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Organization: VeraData
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