Why we built Rendered

We're Sam and Dan, co-founders of Rendered. We came at the same problem from very different professional lives - here's how that led us to build this.

Sam spent a decade in the nonprofit world: Oxfam, Amnesty International, and now running a research organisation studying what drives social change. Across every cause he worked on, from climate campaigns to refugee response in Jordan and Bangladesh, he kept seeing the same pattern: brilliant people underdelivering not because they lacked talent, but because they lacked capacity. The professional infrastructure that any commercial organisation takes for granted - strategy, systems, communications - was simply out of reach.

Dan came at a similar problem from a different direction. Years of running small businesses taught him something counterintuitive about volunteers: even talented, well-meaning ones are hard to hold accountable. You can't push back on quality or timeline without feeling ungrateful. He started to see payment differently, not just compensation, but as a coordination mechanism. It's what turns a favour into a professional engagement. Both sides show up differently when there's money involved.

They spent months interviewing nonprofits about what they needed and couldn't get. One conversation with a charity professional stood out: “The best software we've ever had was a custom CRM. A pro bono volunteer built it for us.” Their immediate reaction was the same: wouldn't it be great if that kind of support was far more widely available?

That's why they produced Rendered: A platform connecting nonprofits with skilled professionals at roughly 25% of consultancy rates. Not volunteering. Not discounted consulting. A third thing - professional engagement with accountability built in, at rates that work for both sides.