MySociety continue to roll out their launch projects, with the launch of Pledgebank today. Pledgebank explains itself with the tagline ‘Tell the world “I’ll do it, but only if you’ll help me do it”‘. Pledgebank hopes to connect people with similar interests at heart, who want to make a change but often “feel powerless” to do so.

A Pledgebank user makes a promise online, and sets a threshold for the number of people who also need to agree to it. The website provides automatically generated promotional flyers for a particular pledge, to help promote the pledge locally. Anyone can then join the pledge either through the website, or by texting their support to a dedicated number that is written on each flyer. The Pledgebank website then tracks the interest in a particular pledge and informs its participants when the target is successfully reached. There’s no guarantee that people will do whatever they promised, but the creators’ faith is placed in the “psychological bet” that a show of support will spurn desire to carry out a task.

Only time will tell how successful Pledgebank will be, but it deserves credit if only for its attempt to foster local communities, and in its excellent explanation of how important offline engagement is for local pledges to succeed.