What would you do for a pair of sneakers?

It’s a Thursday morning in February and the atmosphere is romantic at Summerill & Bishop in West London. The lighting is soft and the air intoxicating with scented candles; a long table is covered in one of the brand’s signature colorful tablecloths. The table is laden with flowers, cake stands, and cookies dotted with sugar hearts.

These sweet treats were prepared for Age UK’s Valentine’s Day Gala, a tea party that brought together 400 Kensington & Chelsea residents who would otherwise have spent the day alone. The bakers are 30 of summerill and bishop‘s most enthusiastic customers, each of whom has been promised a reward in return. Fashion shopper Rosalyn Holman walks by with three well-packed containers. “I did a brownie and cookie mix, Smartie topped cupcakes, and heart cupcakes, though unfortunately they’ve expanded…” she says doubtfully. They look delicious. Holman adds the treats to the growing pile, then stops at the checkout to claim her “reward” – one of those beautiful tablecloths, which retails for £295.

cattle, a London-based for-profit, has been connecting brands with charities for the past year, designing pop-up events where customers can help and benefit. They are incentivizing goodwill, so to speak, matching consumer desire with philanthropy. When a customer signs up to do a good deed and turns it in, he gets something he wants in return. In this case it is an elegant tablecloth. At another time, it could be priority access to a hotel or restaurant. Or festival tickets. For now it’s on a small scale: Events have been limited to 30 to 50 volunteers, but each one has been booked up within hours.

“The brand chooses the cause and we create the activity,” explains Lauren Scott-Harris, who co-founded Earnt with former Onefinestay COO Lavina Liyanage. With 20 years of experience building luxury brands as PR, Scott-Harris had his lightening moment as he gazed at the lines of limited-edition sneakers and wondered: what if we offered them the chance to skip the line? queue if they participated in a verified beach cleanup? -above? “People are prepared to stand in line or hit refresh on a browser for hours,” she says. “Let’s make good use of that energy by lending it to those who need it most.”

The test event took place in West London last year and it was quite a lo-fi affair. “We partner with The brown dog tavern to help rebuild the playground at Barnes Primary,” says Scott-Harris. Volunteers received a silver initialed mug to keep in the pub, and their first pint on the house. “The playground was rebuilt and everyone got to know each other too.”

I want to be able to skip the line at the Louvre by doing a garbage collection

Since then, Earnt has matched clients for the pajama brand desmond and dempsey with Age UK in Lambeth for a home-cooked meal delivered in exchange for discounted pajamas, and held a community gardening event in Brighton where volunteers got VIP access to Soho House events. Brands pay Earnt for the connection of the cause and the event; charities provide the expertise and infrastructure necessary for activation. “They know where the trees should be planted, what trouble spots there are for litter, and how to clean it up effectively,” says Scott-Harris.

Eventually, the goal is to go international, something Scott-Harris plans to implement in three phases. First, they need a strong foundation of brands and causes; then they can move on to “build hubs in locations globally.” The last step is to create technology that can connect brands and volunteers automatically. “We want it to be a new consumption model that is as easy to use as a credit card,” explains Scott-Harris, who compares it to the Klarna online payment method. “I want to be able to get off the Eurostar, look at my Earnt app, and skip the line at the Louvre doing a trash pickup that afternoon.”

It is a fresh and ambitious proposal that takes advantage of a renewed interest in the community and volunteering. “Brands have followers rather than just customers, so mobilizing this connection is definitely a good idea,” says Margery Infield, senior consultant at charity think tank NPC. Other recent efforts include North Face’s “Cleanup Walks,” which pair volunteers with local activists in an attempt to remove debris from the world’s parks and wilderness areas.

To achieve the best results, Infield says, the nature of volunteering must match the volunteers’ abilities. He also cautions that volunteering can often come in short bursts, “so it will be interesting to see if platforms like this can foster longer-term engagement.”

For now, though, the volunteers aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Earnt’s latest events include trash cleanup with the river coffee and design hotels, the latter on paddle boards and with rewards including complimentary stays in London, Edinburgh and Amsterdam. “The last trash pickup we did was pretty nasty,” Scott-Harris notes. Incentive enough? It depends on what you are willing to work for.

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