FreeWill

Emerging

NYC planned giving PBC (founded 2017) with $30M Series B (Bain Capital Double Impact); 1M+ estate plans and $10B+ charitable giving committed across 1,500+ nonprofits; acquired Grant Assistant AI grant writing in 2024.

Updated March 2026

Company Overview

About FreeWill

FreeWill is a New York City-based public benefit corporation and certified B Corp — backed with $30 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Double Impact — providing free online estate planning tools (wills, living trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare directives) that simultaneously democratize access to legal services for individuals and unlock major gifts for nonprofit partners. Founded in 2017 at Stanford University by co-CEOs Jennifer Xia Spradling and Patrick Schmitt, FreeWill has facilitated over one million free estate plans and generated more than $10 billion in committed charitable giving for 1,500+ nonprofit partners. In 2024, FreeWill acquired Grant Assistant, an AI-powered grant proposal platform that reduces grant writing time by two-thirds — marking FreeWill's first international expansion with teams added in Washington D.C. and Lahore, Pakistan. FreeWill employs 200 people across the United States and internationally, with Spradling leading product and engineering from Seattle while Schmitt leads sales and customer success from Miami.

Business Model & Competitive Advantage

FreeWill's planned giving platform addresses the nonprofit major gift fundraising gap created by the complexity of estate-based giving: charitable bequests, stock gifts, cryptocurrency donations, donor-advised fund (DAF) grants, and qualified charitable distributions (QCDs) from IRAs represent the largest potential sources of nonprofit revenue — the average charitable bequest is $48,000 versus a typical cash gift of $120 — but require estate planning tools and administrative infrastructure that most nonprofits and individual donors lack access to. FreeWill's model (providing free attorney-quality estate planning tools as a donor acquisition tool for nonprofits) removes the cost barrier to will creation (traditional estate attorneys charge $1,500-5,000 for basic will and trust packages), driving a 16% charitable bequest inclusion rate among FreeWill users versus 2-5% of the general population. FreeWill's stock gift processing, crypto donation infrastructure, and DAFpay integration for DAF grants create the infrastructure that nonprofit development offices need to accept complex non-cash donations without dedicated technology staff.

Competitive Landscape 2025–2026

In 2025, FreeWill competes in the planned giving technology, nonprofit fundraising platform, and legal tech estate planning market with Giving Docs (estate planning for charitable giving), Bequest (estate planning charitable giving), and LegalZoom (NYSE: LZ, online legal documents, $740M revenue) for nonprofit partner adoption of planned giving technology platforms and individual user estate plan creation. The Grant Assistant acquisition adds AI-powered grant proposal writing to FreeWill's platform — targeting the $100B+ US foundation and government grants market where nonprofits allocate significant staff time to proposal writing. The B Corp and public benefit corporation structure (legally requiring FreeWill to balance profit with social mission) attracts the impact-focused nonprofit partners and ESG-committed investors (Bain Capital Double Impact) that validate FreeWill's model. The 2025 strategy focuses on growing nonprofit partner activation of FreeWill's complex giving tools (stock, crypto, DAF, QCD), deploying Grant Assistant AI across FreeWill's 1,500+ nonprofit partner network, and expanding the estate planning platform internationally through the Lahore engineering team.

Founded
2017
Headquarters
Stanford University, California
Revenue
$30M
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The FreeWill Story

Founded in 2017
Stanford University, California
Founded by Jennifer Xia Spradling, Patrick Schmitt

Founders

Jennifer Xia SpradlingPatrick Schmitt
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Company Timeline

Major milestones in FreeWill's journey

10
Total Events
2
Funding Rounds
1
Acquisitions
4
Product Launches
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Leadership Team

Meet the leaders behind FreeWill

Jennifer Xia Spradling

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Jenny Xia Spradling co-founded FreeWill in 2017 and leads product management, design, engineering, and finance from Seattle. Before FreeWill, she worked at McKinsey and Bain Capital where she helped launch the firm's first impact investment fund. She also co-founded Paribus, which was later acquired by Capital One. She holds degrees from Stanford University.

Patrick Schmitt

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Patrick Schmitt co-founded FreeWill in 2017 and leads sales, marketing, and customer success from Miami. Before FreeWill, he founded two nonprofit organizations and served as Head of Innovation at Change.org, where he helped grow the platform to 100 million users in 4 years. His deep nonprofit sector expertise complements Jenny's technology and finance background.

Open Positions

Reddit Discussions

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Key Differentiators

Emerging Innovator

FreeWill is an emerging player bringing innovative solutions to the Nonprofit Tech market.

Frequently Asked Questions

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