COMPANY

Name: Percent Pledge

Location: Chicago, IL

Founded: 2017

Founder(s): Joel Police

Website: https://www.percentpledge.org/

Social Media: 191 Likes on Facebook, 5 Followers on Twitter, 647 Followers on Instagram

INDUSTRY – Charitable Giving

Size: $410 Bn in the US (2017) (Source)

Introduction

Percent Pledge is an online platform that streamlines the process of long-term donation to charity, by individuals and by companies. Through the website, users can easily choose which causes they want to donate to, and how much they’ll be pledging, in addition to seeing the results of their donations. Percent Pledge currently employs 7 individuals, including 4 full-time employees.

The Product

The platform allows users to select a cause (or a group of charities working towards a similar goal, such as women empowerment or eradication of hunger), select the percentage of their income they would like to pledge monthly with 0.5% increments, view detailed reports on how their donation is being put to use, and receive reports with tax receipts for easy availing of tax benefits. These detailed transparent reports on how the donations are being used have proven to be particularly successful for Percent Pledge, and its founderbelieves that these are what set it apart from other charity services.

The platform currently features charities like Team Rubicon, Feeding America and CodeNow among many others, and also sees companies like Nerdio, 1871, and SpotHero as clients. Percent Pledge intends to target mid-size businesses with 50-500 employees to field as clients, and allows these businesses to create their own tailored portfolio of donations.

Origin and Founding Team

Percent Pledge founder Joel Pollick said in an interview that he grew up in a household that donated 10% of its income to charity, but that he found it difficult to match that when he set out on his own. This was because most charity options don’t provide a high level of transparency, and the process of donating to charity and availing corresponding tax benefits can be cumbersome. When he tried to find a platform or tool that streamlined the donation process, he failed to find one, and decided to launch such a platform himself.

Performance and Trends

Percent Pledgeraised a total of $25000 in a single round of seed funding that concluded in August 2018.