Founders Pledge

THE BACKGROUND

Founders Pledge is a charity that allows tech entrepreneurs to pledge to donate at least 2% of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business.

Since Founders Pledge launched in 2015, pledges from over 700 entrepreneurs have raised almost $200 million for charity.

Founders Pledge were working with an agency to build a new website, but due to a lack of technical expertise, the project was failing.

RESCUING A BUSINESS-CRITICAL WEB DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

Founders Pledge is a young, exciting brand that’s taking an innovative approach to raising money for charity. A key part of their strategy was to develop a strong web presence that reflected their brand, and that moved time-consuming administrative processes online.

Founders Pledge were developing a new site, but it became clear that the contractor they were working with wasn’t able to complete the work to the standard needed. Founders Pledge asked Bit Zesty to come on board to rescue the project. We were able to turn it around and deliver on time and to budget.

We worked closely with the Founders Pledge team to create a site that met their needs and was easy to use. Our developers built the site, our visual designers designed pages that had been missed and our UX designers improved key user journeys.

Founders Pledge is growing fast and expanding internationally, so we delivered a website that will scale into many languages, as they move from a small UK team to a global organisation.

ALLOWING ENTREPRENEURS TO BUILD ONLINE PROFILES

A key way Founders Pledge promote their service is to create online profiles to share their pledgers’ stories. Creating pledger profiles used to be a time-consuming process, considerable back and forth between the Founders Pledge team and the Entrepreneurs. Only a few of them were featured on the site.

We developed functionality to allow the pledgers to create their own online profile on the site. It’s quick and easy to use and most pledgers chose to create a profile.

Founders Pledge now have a fast-growing bank of profiles that help to promote their service. The Entrepreneurs themselves have a space online where they can demonstrate their commitment to their favourite charities.

MAKING THE PLEDGING PROCESS DIGITAL

Since they launched, Founders Pledge had managed the pledging process offline. Entrepreneurs would call or email to request an application form, complete it, print it, sign it, scan it, then send it back to the Founders Pledge team who would manually enter the data. This was time-consuming and the offline process didn’t match the expectations of the users who worked in tech industries.

We built a digital pledging service for Founders Pledge. Entrepreneurs can now register on the website to set up and sign their pledge. A process which used to take days, can now be completed in minutes online. Little or no admin is required from the Founders Pledge team, leaving them free to focus on promoting their organisation’s work and reaching out to new potential pledgers.

The new digital service makes pledging simpler, clearer and faster, and there’s been a significant increase in the number of pledges made. In the past Founders Pledge averaged around $5 million worth of pledges a month, however, since the site launch, this has increased to $14 million worth of pledges a month.