Pledgie

Pledgie is a donation website created by Mark Daggett and Garry Dolley that runs on the Ruby on Rails web application framework. The creators have also worked on Revver.com and decided to create Pledgie after meeting each other there and discovering that the both had a passion for open source software and the Ruby language.

The site allows anyone to make a pledge for just AbOUT any type of cause, but spamming and scamming may occur. To avoid this, users have the ability to report these pledges. The donations are received through the user's PayPal account. Causes can have a set ending time and users can set the money goal for the pledge. The goal may also be left empty. Anyone can comment on a cause whether they have donated or not, and the pledge owner can respond to these comments, but not remove them.

While the website aims for the funding of health, safety and other causes that can help the community, the majority of pledges are listed under "Internet", "Programming Languages" and "Uncategorized".

History

Pledgie was created in 2007 by Mark and Garry who wanted to make an open and transparent donations website. Their first "real" campaign was the pledge they created for the Mephisto project by Rick Olson and Justin Palmer, that was used as a test-drive for Pledgie, although the Mephisto project already had a PayPal donation button.

Interface

The Pledgie interface is simple and has some similarities to social bookmark sites such as Digg. Another similarity to Digg is the yellow pledge counter placed next to each cause showing how many pledges have been made. These are very similar to Digg's yellow Digg counters.