FixMyStreet			HearFromYourCouncillor
PledgeBank		WriteToThem

PledgeBank

Giving people the motivation to help out in their communities

Benefits

Proven track record motivating a variety of broad range of social, environmental and democractic activities, ie donating blood, planting trees, cleaning up their areas, starting new community & campaign groups.
Can be branded to support specific local authority initiatives, (ie local sports or environmental drives).
Each local authority installation is part of a global network of integrated PledgeBanks
Email alerts for new pledges in local areas
Integration with other systems, such as BBC Action Network

How does it work?

PledgeBank is about reassuring people that they won’t be alone if they decide to do something altruistic for their community. It works by letting people make pledges of the form “I will do something, but only if 10 other people will do it too”. Launched in June 2005 it has a remarkable first 6 months, picking up over 30,000 signatures on over 1000 pledges, and achieving goals from getting over 100 people to give blood, to creating sustainable funding streams for new and pre-existing community groups in the UK and the US.

How do you know people keep their pledges?

PledgeBank relies on a calculation about human psychology. Instead of tying our users into unenforceable contracts, we built the site to push already somewhat motivated people into action. To test whether this had been the correct assessment of the way people think, we asked successful pledge creators who’d asked for money in their pledges how much they actually got. The worst result was 50%, the best about 150%, most achieving about 70–80% of what they’d asked for.