Guilty Pledgers - the fundraising app

by Startacus Admin

We all have those songs don’t we…the ones whose cringe-worthiness is universally acknowledged and yet somehow manage to make it onto our music players.

“How did that get on there?” we may nervously chuckle when one of our guilty pleasures is suddenly exposed to the world by the (supposedly) indiscriminate ‘random’ playlist. A hasty switch to the ‘coolest’ song we can think of and no harm done...hopefully.

If like us you are rather partial to a spot of lyrical cheese, then you may be happy to know that a tech startup has just launched which is looking to turn your sense of shame into a donation to a good cause…

Guilty Pledgers is a Spotify web app that lets you donate money to charity each time you play a song which falls into the category of ‘cheesy’- as a kind of 21st century penance for your bad taste in music.

The fundraising app pulls together Spotify's song catalogue and Just Giving's charity payments platform to help alleviate the shame of playing some of your guilty pleasures at a party. The party host registers with Guilty Pledgers, picks which charity they would like the money to go to, opens a playlist which can then be filled with excessive amounts of ill advised pop cheesiness by all of the guests.

Each guilty pleasure added to the list means a charitable donation of £2 - a small price to pay to remove the shame associated with an over indulgence in Abba !

The app is the innovative creation of Andy Whitlock, Katy Theakston and Ben Tomlinson who all worked together at a top London digital agency and had collaborated on a number of charity fundraising campaigns. They remarked that the vast VAST majority of such campaigns rely upon evoking a sense of guilt from the public - something along the lines of “send us money or this puppy will be sad forever” type tactics. This gave the trio some inspiration as Whitlock explains:

“Charity ads work by making you feel guilty and then giving you a way out - donate money and you don't feel so bad any more. So we wanted to take the idea of offsetting guilt, but make it a positive experience”

The app launched about a month ago with the first registered parties having been a great success and raising plenty of dough for worthy causes… minus the guilt!

If you enjoyed reading about this fab tech innovation, then you will probably enjoy having a gander at some of these : 

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Published on: 3rd April 2014