Impact Report

From Glenn

Six months in, and I'm still a little surprised it works.

When we set 10% for Local up as a founding tenet, the open question was whether small businesses would actually follow through — whether the goodwill model would hold up without an audit team. Turns out, mostly, yes. The first half of 2026 saw 13 local causes named, $7,200 pledged, and $6,400 of that verified as given so far. The gap is partly normal lag (paperwork on the receiving end) and partly real — pledges aren't the same thing as money in a cause's bank account, which is exactly why we report both.

— Glenn

The numbers

Thirteen different local causes were named this period — no curated list, no theme. Schools and animal rescues were the most common, but anything counted: a community garden, a neighborhood food pantry, a youth team's tournament fees, a librarian's summer reading drive. The smallest pledge for the period was $32; the largest was $480 from a Studio-tier subscriber pledging the full six months at once.

Verified-given lags pledged by design. Some causes confirm receipts on a quarterly cadence; some never do (a neighbor's GoFundMe doesn't issue thank-you notes). Where verification lands, we record it. Where it doesn't, we trust the customer's word — that was the deal from the start.

Stories

Stories come from the receiving causes — collected during our verification check-in — with optional one-to-three-sentence responses from the businesses that pledged. Both are shared with permission. The pair below is illustrative.