Charity creates new fundraising platform
Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research has developed a digital fundraising platform that its says “reverses” the traditional model of raising money for charity through sponsorship by asking people to set challenges for others.
The ‘Pledgeit’ fundraising platform encourages people to challenge their friends to take on activities in return for donations. Challengers then pledge money to the charity and invite others to do the same. The pledges are then cashed as donations if the challenge is completed. All the money raised goes directly to the charity.
The platform has been built by the Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research’s in-house tech teams but the charity plans to make the platform available to other charities.
Challenges can be anything from eating as many crackers as possible in a minute, doing standup comedy or running a marathon. People can also remove challenges set for them if they do not want to participate.
Pledgeit is integrated with Facebook so that challenges can be shared and take advantage of the viral nature of social media. Once completed the participant is crowned a “pledgend”.
The blood cancer charity says the “radical” platform will moves beyond the traditional model of someone deciding to do an event for charity and then asking for sponsorship money.
The charity says that it wanted to develop a “creative and innovative” way to encourage fundraising in response to the funding challenges the sector is facing as the downturn and Government funding cuts put pressure on incomes.
Thomas Muirhead, head of digital at Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, told Marketing Week that the charity will add additional tools and functions to the platform as they see how supporters and using it and what they would like to see added.
Muirhead adds that it gives friends the opportunity to challenge friends to do things they have always wanted to do at the same time as raising money to fund research into curing and treating blood cancers.
The charity receives no Government funding and needs to raise more than £120m over the next five years to fund its research programmes.
