Helping fund high-impact, underrepresented projects

Kiwi crowdfunding platform PledgeMe continues to find its niche supporting the historically underfunded to raise the funds they need.

PledgeMe focuses on supporting businesses and projects with high social and environmental impact to generate funds, particularly women, Māori and other groups who are traditionally underfunded.

“We are the go-to funding platform for people who often struggle to get financing from banks or other sources. Only 16 percent of capital raises in New Zealand have women founders. Fifty percent of PledgeMe campaigns have women as leaders,” says founder Anna Guenther (pictured).

“One impact fund in Aotearoa only funded one percent of companies that pitched them in the last four years. PledgeMe helps 58 percent of equity campaigns get funded, and, importantly, two-thirds of companies that get funded have impact at their core.”

In the arts, $320 million of Creative New Zealand grant applications weren’t funded last year alone, with only one in five applications accessing funding.

“People are finding the traditional pathways a bit harder, and we’re trying to help,” says Anna. “The past few years haven’t been easy. Most people are doing it tough. We are too. With the impact of Covid, the high levels of inflation and everything else that has been rocking the boat, we will see an even greater need for platforms like PledgeMe. When communities fund the things they care about, we are more connected and resilient.”

PledgeMe was founded in 2012 to help more people source funds from people they knew – their friends, family, community, customers and contacts. Rather than going out cold to ask people for funds, their ‘crowd’ are more likely to give what they can because they already know and trust them.

And it has worked. PledgeMe has supported a wide range of founders, creators and community-doers around New Zealand. Almost $70 million has been pledged across 1,600 successful campaigns from 150,000 supporters.

In 2014 PledgeMe launched its equity crowdfunding and crowdlending platforms so businesses could access capital to grow. They have run three successful equity crowdfunding campaigns themselves, to fund business growth.

“Companies like Ethique did their first investment rounds through PledgeMe and have since gone on to big things,” says Anna.

PledgeMe are now building groups of people who want to invest in high impact projects and business, to find out more head to this link 

Check out PledgeMe here.