PledgeBank

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PledgeBank is a website which runs pledges on all topics, of the form: "I will do x if y number of people agree to do the same." Such public commitments are a non-coercive way to solve problems of collective action, especially when the goal is a public good. PledgeBank was founded by mySociety and went live June 13, 2005. Though hosted/run by a UK-based nonprofit, PledgeBank has been translated by volunteers into 12 languages in addition to English. The Omidyar Network has funded outreach efforts for PledgeBank in the U.S.^[1]

Notable organisations promoted or started by pledges on PledgeBank include the seed funding for the UK Open Rights Group and publicity and legal funding for the NO2ID campaign.

Other creative efforts to raise money for charity are presented. For example, 1,000 people in India donated books to set up a library. Another is looking for small-scale donations for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Pledges in the U.S. have been created to bolster individual efforts, such as saving books from landfills and donating blood, and organizational efforts, such as raising money for an intern and presidential campaigning.

Furthermore, it has been utilized to drum up global support for online protests, most recently by Freeculture.org to boycott CDs with DRM.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair started a pledge himself, to become patron of a community sports club if 100 notable figures will do the same, which succeeded.^[2].

Examples of successful pledges include the current NOMEDIA campaign started by Graham Woods. He pledged to completely boycott all forms of media for two weeks as long as 10 other people do the same, and the textbook for Africa project started by Darren Grover. Another overwhelmingly successful pledge was run by "Big Ed" to stop unnecessarily using plastic grocery bags.