Spendrise: New Platform Helps You Spur Change Where You Shop

Running the Women Startup Challenge and our social change web agency, Rad Campaign I get pitched a lot of different products. I recently discovered Spendrise, a platform for creating positive change everywhere you spend money. Here's how it works.

1. Start a Pledge
You support a Spendrise campaign by pledging to spend money if the business makes a positive change that you believe in. The change could be asking the business to go solar, to provide sick days to its employees, or any number of ideas! It's free to pledge, and your purchase only happens if the campaign succeeds.

2. Share the Pledge
The more people that pledge to spend to see the pledge implemented, the more likely a business agrees to make the change. Spread the word and see the pledges grow!

3. Pledge Fulfilled
The campaign creator brings all the pledges to the business to decide. If the business accepts, your pledge becomes a giftcard, and your dollars helped make real change! If not, no worries, your pledge expires and you keep your money.

I think this is an interesting platform to do business accountability campaigns. For example, there's an upcoming campaign on Spendrise where people can crowdsource support to urge Starbucks to pledge to use recyclable cups. I bet you did not realize that Starbucks uses 4 billion paper cups a year, but none of them are recyclable. If this pledge was crowdsourced it would be a win for advocates/consumers and Starbucks. Consumers would decrease their landfill pollution and Starbucks would earn more business from consumers who pledged to support them for implementing this important business practice.