The pilot is now live!

Yesterday was a big day at A Good Thing! After many months of preparation, our pilot went live.

We have 20 businesses participating in the pilot, all based in the Thames Valley area, from Reading to West London. We’re hugely grateful for their support.

On the first day we had two offers already listed on the site. Quite by coincidence it was some desks and pedestals from one business in Reading, and some desk dividers from another in Beaconsfield - a perfect match if a charity needs to expand or update their office environment.

You can see the current list of live offers here. It’s a little bare at the moment but we expect this to quickly fill up as business post their offers.

The feedback we’ve had so far is that the site is clear and easy to use, which we’re delighted about. Richard had been working so hard to get the online platform up and running – it was really satisfying to see it being used. Here’s a little taste of the business portal.

The night before launch, we entertained ourselves carrying out a ‘dry run’ with our children: we let them set themselves up as businesses on the test site, and then asked them to post fantasy items for charities to request. You can imagine the fun they had with that! (Charities had their choice of quantum computers or cuddly plushies!) It was a useful exercise, though – the process threw up a few bugs, and we came up with several ideas for simplifying and streamlining the user experience.

With the pilot live, we’re now working on making sure those first few matches between local business and charities are successful, and scaling up to include more local business and charities.

If you would like to help, all you need to do is simply spread the word! If social media is your thing, then please share our Twitter and Facebook pages, but otherwise a simple old-fashioned email to a friend or colleague telling then about the idea would be super helpful. Thank you.