Percent Pledge began with one simple question.

One evening, late in 2016, I was walking to the Blue Line from my consulting job in Chicago’s Loop. It was the same walk I made every day and it always took exactly 10 minutes. The perfect length to check in with family and I owed my Dad a call.

My Father, Marc, has worked in philanthropy for 20+ years and philanthropy was the topic we landed on that evening. I told him that I wanted to start giving more to charity and asked him for suggestions. He laughed at first, reminding me that, as a kid, I resisted when my parents donated 10 percent of our family's money each year or made me donate 10 percent of my Bar Mitzvah money. "Mom, Dad, why would we do that when it could be better spent on new basketball shoes or the latest Abercrombie & Fitch cargo shorts you never buy me!"

After he got done laughing at the irony of my "personal growth", I pressed him on the way he gave when I was growing up. That notion of giving some percentage of my income to charity had stuck with me, so I asked if he knew of an easy way to do so?

He said he didn’t know of anything like that and his response surprisingly excited me. I told Dad "love you, gotta go", then rushed home to jot down everything I thought could go into a platform that made it simpler for young people like me to make giving a bigger part of their lives — to make giving a habit.