PledgeBank is an amazing idea and it seems like it is working great. PledgeBank is a website you can submit a pledge so that you can get things done (GTD) and the pledge requires several people to be involved. What this website accomplishes is an amazing way to help better our world in a way that I have never seen before. This is why the Internet is so great. Here are some examples of some pledges:
- “I will volunteer my services at a local charity shop for at least 4 hours a week but only if 10 others will too.” (7 people have signed the pledge. 3 more are needed to complete it.)
- “I will completely clear out my wardrobe, CD collection and bookshelf of all the stuff I never wear or use and give it all to Cancer Research UK but only if 50 other people will too.” (31 people have signed the pledge. 19 more are needed to complete it.)
- “I will give 1% of my gross annual income to charity but only if 100 people will too.” (50 people have signed the pledge. 50 more are needed to complete it.)
These are very serious pledges, and people are signing up. The results have amazed me and shown me the good side of people and really makes a difference. Don’t want to do a pledge like what I have listed above? Are you technical when it comes to computer services? Then you can do something like Ben Dyer:
“Ben Dyer will offer my web design / development skills to a charity for free but only if 5 people will give me suggestions as to which charity to support.”
What a great idea. You know what I think would be cool? If we can somehow get a Web Service to use so we can put pledges on our websites to spread them faster. For those of you who don’t know what I mean by Web Service: “A Web service is any piece of software that makes itself available over the Internet and uses a standardized XML messaging system” (Factory3x5). In doing this, we would create a simple method to to open the XML formatted document with.. lets say PHP. We would then pull the latest pledges and they would be in real time with the amount of people signed and number that are still needed. Like an updating counter of the progress of each pledge. I think if there was something like this, pledges like the above would be completed faster and would make a big difference.
What do you think? Would it be possible? I’m willing to put pledges on my sites that direct the visitor to PledgeBank.
November 17th, 2006 at 4:50 am
yes i would very very much like this also
May 29th, 2007 at 5:04 am