Pledger is now an active community of 100+ generous retailers, 30+ amazing Cause partners and a product that makes it incredibly easy for brands to make a meaningful social impact from every sale. All of this in under a year! Here is our story, how we started and what we are planning for 2022.
But First, A Few Fun Facts From 2021
How It All Began...
A lot of Pledger's initial Beta / first release was built @ Salty Coworking Community in London in the midst of the Covid Pandemic. As the product grew, so did the number of Pledger HQ's, including MIQ facilities (Hotel Quarantine) in Auckland, New Zealand. Read the full story.
The Release!
We will never forget the first merchants signing up and how exciting and terrifying that felt. The core team were in MIQ in Auckland (NZ) and extremely jet-lagged when Shopify let us know we went live!
Our Philosophy
We are genuinely excited about building a retail ecosystem where giving is the norm for retail brands. This means removing friction from the whole process, start to end.
From day one it has been about making it easy for retail brands to make a meaningful social impact and grow through giving. In this world of full-on noise and choice we wanted to:
make it easy to pick the right Cause partners by spotlighting organisations with quantifiable impact
give retailers tools they need to build engaging giving campaigns
keep the go-live process as simple and quick as possible.
We also wanted to ensure our Cause partnerships are transparent and authentic.
Building Pledger With Your Feedback, Every Step Of The Way
Cheers to customer cantered development! That means listening to Pledger users every step of the way,
We released game-changing features like:
The Customer Donation Feature - allowing some of our merchants to double their impact
Manual Charity Payments - meaning we can onboard any Cause instantly; shopper facing impact tracking and more.
Dream Team
In August our team grew, with Westen joining as the CMO, followed shortly by the on-boarding Echo and Eric to make sure you get all the good stuff via social.!
What To Expect In 2022
We know merchants want a greater variety of Causes to be able to partner with, to engage shoppers every step of the way and greater customisations. You spoke - we listened. Here are a few key areas we will focus for us next year:
Making it possible for brands to partner with any UK Cause, instantly
Shopper engagement features that build loyalty, brand trust and ultimately help you make more sales and a more positive impact.
Deeper customisation options for Pledger features in your store
Ending This Year On A High!
We couldn't be more proud of what we have achieved together and can't wait for the year to come. With so many UK retailers already on-board, brilliant Cause partners and a strong team - we are ending this year on a serious high. And hopefully so are you! It is our generous merchants, partners and our amazing crew that motivate us to do our best every day.
So whatever you have planned this winter - we are wishing you a refreshing and festive break.
Happy festivities, keep making an impact & see you back next year!
Mariya, Westen, Liam and Pledger Team
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