TWO Stourbridge entrepreneurs who have created an innovative online platform for people to give to charity are hoping for a chance to pitch their business idea to Richard Branson and get their hands on a share of £1m in prize-money.

Lee Clark and Richard Waldron have beaten thousands of entrants to make it through to the first live pitching round of the Virgin Media Business VOOM 2016 competition with their pledged-based charity fundraising enterprise GivePenny.com.

The pair launched the initiative at the start of this year to create a new and fun way for people to raise money for charity.

They've already got 15 charities on board including Stourbridge's Mary Steven’s Hospice, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Toybox, The Albion Foundation (West Bromwich Albion’s charitable organisation), Royal Life Saving Society and Bloodwise - and more in the pipeline set to register.

Now they're hoping to raise the profile of the venture through Richard Branson's VOOM competition - and are due to make their live pitch at 12.30pm on Thursday June 2 after successfully making it through a public vote.

Richard, aged 41, said: "It has been an incredible effort from our family and friends to spread the word."

The next stage of the competition will see business ideas whittled down to 40 semi-finalists who will then have their sights on the live final where six lucky entrepreneurs will get to pitch to Richard Branson for a chance to share £1 million in prizes.

Telemarketing business bosses Richard and Lee hope to change the face of UK fundraising with GivePenny, which uses pledges to motivate fundraisers to reach personal goals.

Lee, aged 37, came up with the idea after putting in four months of training hard for a charity cycling event in 2013 only to have to pull out after going down with the flu.

He said: "I had mixed feelings of guilt because I couldn't go through with the ride and frustration because I had tracked over 1,000 miles in training and my supporters couldn't see all that hard work.

"Driven by this experience, I went on to create the concept behind the GivePenny online fundraising platform."

After carrying out extensive research he formed a team to bring his idea to fruition and in January they finally launched GivePenny.com which invites sponsors to pledge donations for specific goals or milestones, or on a Per X basis such as steps, miles, days or tasks.

Lee said: "One of the really unique features is that fundraisers can count anything they like as part of their challenges and even connect their Fitbit, Runkeeper and Facebook check-in data to automatically drive donations.

"We want to help charities offer new ways to encourage the public to give on a regular basis - and we can make it more fun for fundraisers, more engaging for their supporters and therefore improve fundraiser momentum. This should help charities to raise more money."

The pair say the GivePenny platform has already raised more than £4,000 in charitable donations in its first five months and some of the charities signed up are already planning marketing campaigns to promote the website's unique fundraising features.

But to fund software development to connect GivePenny to more apps, websites, wearable technology and devices that generate data which could link in with fundraising challenges they hope to net £10,000 in the VOOM competition.

Lee added: "We expect to develop a family of GivePenny apps and services that enhance the fundraising experience for the public. We want to provide charities with the best online fundraising partnership they've ever had."

The duo, who are both fathers-of-two, also aim to invest in growing the business over the next three to five years and have set a target to get more than 1,000 charities on board.

They are keen to develop partnerships with organisers of existing events as well as creating new, virtual fundraising events - and they hope to launch the platform in other countries if it proves a hit in the UK where it is currently the only pledge-based fundraising initiative.