Pledge for threatened species

Environmental policy specialist Samuel Marwood was helping to write the threatened species strategy for the Victorian Government two years ago when he ran into a problem: funding.

Samuel knew straight away that he was not the only person being kept awake at night by the challenge of securing ongoing financial support for a threatened species program. The hearts and minds behind some of the greatest human defenders of such species are consumed by where they’ll find their next stage of funding.

On the other side of the equation, Samuel also knew there were great people in the community who wanted to support threatened species – but who didn’t have any money, either. Not very much, anyway.

The answer? Samuel put on his thinking cap and innovated. The result, Edge Pledge, brings those people to the problem and delivers a solution by creating new and fun opportunities to raise money for a cause or threatened species they care about.

And perhaps the most distinctive thing about Edge Pledge is its “challenge generator” – a website that asks each user to answer a few questions to determine their personality type, then uses this information to suggest a selection of appropriate challenges. Friends and colleagues “vote” on which challenge they favour; the challenge that gains the most in donations “wins” and can shortly begin.

Edge Pledge is no ordinary fundraising platform. It is already disrupting crowdfunding principles that are themselves not long on the market and, incredibly, Edge Pledge has raised more than $30,000 in the past six weeks.

Samuel has got it this far, but now he is calling out to the TSR Hub to help it go further, “whether it is sharing it on Facebook, making a donation or creating your own pledge, we need everyone to help out where they can”.

You can find out more about Edge Pledge through Facebook or Twitter, from the website edgepledge.com, or from entertainers Rove McManus and Claire Hooper, who have dressed up in costume to tell us what it feels like to be a threatened species.

You might even find that Edge Pledge disrupts your own status quo for a while…