Turning pounds lifted into pledged donations.

LIFT4Charity had a clever idea: lift weights at a Koko FitClub, get sponsors to pledge per pound, and send the proceeds to a charity. It only works with real software behind it, profiles, pledges tied to a specific lifter, progress tracking, and a way to collect and route donations when a challenge ends. Off-the-shelf donation tools couldn't handle the per-pound mechanic.

We designed the brand and built a custom platform on a hand-coded WordPress foundation. Lifters registered, set a goal, and tracked pounds lifted; sponsors pledged a flat amount or a rate per pound tied to a specific lifter. When a challenge ended, the system generated the invoice and processed the donation through Stripe, then emailed confirmations. We built an admin center with reporting and spreadsheet exports, a weight-data import, team challenges, and email and social sharing, then hosted it and kept improving it after launch. As a non-profit, they got the work at a reduced rate.

LIFT4Charity launched in 2013 as a working fundraising platform, carrying a lifter from sign-up to a tracked challenge to a collected, receipted donation. Real donations were flowing by early 2014, and we kept it running and improving in the years after.