The Businesses That Helped Us Get Here
It Started With a Simple Idea
Let’s be honest – everything we’ve built started with a simple idea.
A belief that it should be easier for people to find help, support and opportunities in their communities.
When we spoke to people about it, the most common response was:
“Doesn’t that already exist?”
But it didn’t.
At the same time, there were moments where people questioned whether I could do it at all. I was and still am, a self-described “grandma in tech” – five foot nothing, with a big, bold idea.
At the start, I didn’t have a roadmap. Just a strong sense that this needed to exist.
Over the last 10+ years, that has changed. I now know where this needs to go. There needs to be a connected network of area-based community maps, so that in every community, people can find help, support and opportunities more easily. And there needs to be a sustainable way to support that work, so it isn’t reliant on grants. It hasn’t been to date – however it has run on a very lean budget.
Along the way, something else has changed too. The conversations have shifted. What once felt like explaining an idea that didn’t exist has become being invited into discussions about how this kind of work can support communities at scale. There is a growing recognition that visibility and connection matter and that what we’re building has a role to play.
How The Community Pledge Evolved
During the many of the conversations I had along the way, I often found myself speaking with small business owners who genuinely wanted to support their communities, yet didn’t always know how, or didn’t have the time or resources to go searching for the right opportunities. At the same time, we were hearing from other businesses who loved the idea of what we were building, however they didn’t have the space to engage in that way.
One conversation has stayed with me.
I spoke with a business owner whose mother had lived with dementia. He told me about a local group they had eventually found – a place where there was music and singing and where he could see his mother’s face light up.
After she passed away, he chose to continue supporting that organisation by offering his professional skills.
That stayed with me.
Because it highlighted something important – businesses often want to help. They have skills, experience and willingness. Yet not every business has the time, capacity or flexibility to give that support directly.
The Community Pledge grew from those conversations.
It created a different way to take part. For those who could give time, skills or resources, that opportunity still exists. Yet for those who couldn’t, their membership provides another route – contributing financially in a way that helps sustain aDoddle and supports visibility for community organisations, meaning that they can be found by those who need them, want to connect or are in a position to support them.
We also saw that many business memberships and networks were costly and often focused primarily on the business itself. We wanted to create something different – something that was accessible, practical and meaningful.
A way for businesses to contribute in a way that works for them, while also helping to sustain aDoddle and the wider community infrastructure.
The Businesses That Made it Possible
There are a small number of businesses and individuals whose support made a real difference at key moments along the way.
In the very early days, I met Fiona, an interior designer based in London, at a training event. What followed was an extraordinary level of kindness and belief.
When I needed to travel to London for meetings, she opened up her home to me. She gave me somewhere to stay, made sure I was looked after and created a space where I could think, talk and keep moving forward.
She later made a £1,000 contribution through her business (Fiona Campbell Designs).
At that stage, that support was pivotal. Without it, we simply wouldn’t have got past that first phase.
Over the following years, support from Irwin Mitchell also played an important role. Their backing, at key moments, helped create the stability we needed to keep building.
We were also supported for a number of years through regular monthly contributions from The Salamander in Bath and Hospitality Reservations.
That steady support covered the majority of our core running costs and gave us the space to focus on the work, rather than constantly worrying about finances.
It’s important to say that those two businesses are connected to my family. My eldest son was behind them.
He always said he supported the work because he believed in what we were building and could see its potential. Whether that was entirely objective or not, I’ll never know – but what I do know is that their support made a real and lasting difference.
Alongside this, opportunities to work with organisations like Turning Point, Food Aid Plymouth and West Berkshire Council, through paid contracts rather than donations, helped sustain the work in a different but equally important way.
There have also been individuals who quietly set up small monthly donations.
These contributions, often £15 or £20 a month, may seem modest, yet they’ve helped us continue and just as importantly, reminded us that people believe in what we’re building.
Every contribution, no matter its size, has played a part in helping us keep going.
Building Slowly, on Purpose
From the beginning, we made a conscious decision to build this work slowly and carefully.
We’ve never borrowed money.
We’ve worked within what we’ve had, and kept our running costs as low as possible.
That hasn’t always been easy, yet it has meant that everything we’ve built is grounded in reality and shaped by what is genuinely needed, rather than what looks good on paper.
It’s also meant that we’ve been able to stay true to our values, making decisions based on purpose rather than pressure.
Over time, this approach has given us strong foundations. It’s allowed aDoddle to grow steadily, to learn from real conversations and to evolve in a way that reflects the communities it is there to support.
We’ve never tried to do everything all at once.
Instead, we’ve focused on building something that lasts.
Why this Matters Now
The world around us is showing, more than ever, that the need for help, support and connection within communities is growing.
Whether it’s food poverty, financial pressure, isolation or access to opportunity, many people are facing challenges that make it harder to find the support they need, when they need it.
At the same time, there are thousands of charities, community groups and organisations already doing incredible work, yet too often they remain unseen.
What started as an idea has become something real, shaped by conversations, supported by others and tested over time. It is now a growing digital infrastructure, helping to make community support more visible and easier to navigate.
For this to work at the scale it’s needed, it has to grow.
That means strengthening the area-based community maps, continuing to develop the infrastructure behind them and bringing more people into the team to support that growth in a sustainable way.
That’s where The Community Pledge comes in.
It also offers something back to the businesses who take part.
Through their membership, they have a simple way to share what they do, who they help and what matters to them – making their work more visible in a way that feels human and grounded. It creates opportunities to connect, to be found and to show the role they play within their community.
It creates a simple, practical way for businesses to be part of this, through a membership that helps fund the ongoing running and development of aDoddle.
In doing so, it enables charities and community groups to continue creating and maintaining free profiles, making their work visible and accessible to the people who need them, want to connect or are in a position to support them.
It also creates the potential for something much bigger to happen over time.
Several years ago, when this model was shared with four senior leaders at Deutsche Bank at a roundtable in London, one piece of feedback stayed with me. They said I had only got one thing wrong – that I had underestimated the potential once it reached the tipping point.
The real challenge, they said, would be getting there.
Over the years, the focus has been on building something that works in practice – developing the model, learning from real communities and creating strong foundations that can support long-term growth.
Those foundations are now in place.
The next stage is about how that growth is supported and sustained.
It’s about reaching that tipping point – where the model can fund itself, scale more effectively and support communities in the consistent and connected way it has been built for.
Because once that point is reached, something important shifts.
The work becomes sustainable. The infrastructure continues to grow. More communities are able to be mapped, more organisations become visible and more people are able to find the help and support they need.
It also creates the ability, over time, to give back – with funding flowing into communities in a more informed and connected way, guided by what is actually being seen and understood through the maps.
That’s where this has always been heading.
And as that happens, communities become more aware of the businesses around them who are supporting local organisations through The Community Pledge – helping to make those organisations visible to the people who need them.
A note on how this article was created
This article has been created and shaped by Jaki King, Founder and CEO of If Everyone Cares CIC – the organisation behind aDoddle.org and TheCommunityPledge.com.
It reflects more than 25 years of experience working in and alongside communities and over a decade of exploring community mapping, visibility and connection.
The content has also been shaped through listening to hundreds of real stories, insights and experiences shared by people, organisations and communities over time.
As part of the process, Jaki used AI as an accessibility and thinking tool to support how she works as someone who is dyslexic, autistic and has ADHD. This included helping her to structure ideas, refine wording and maintain clarity, while ensuring that the final content reflected her voice, her values and what matters in the work she does.
The article has been developed iteratively, going backwards and forwards to ensure it feels true to that.
(Time invested: approximately 5 hours from first draft to final version.
