Crowdfunding Reward Fulfillment: Pledges Placed in Waves That Stay Right as Holds Clear

Wave slots are fixed, and one cleared pledge can move three others

After a campaign closes, every pledge has to become a shipment: a reward tier, any add-ons the backer bought later, a shipping zone and a place in a fulfillment wave. Waves have a fixed number of slots, pledges are placed in priority order, and a pledge with a declined card or an unpaid add-on balance goes on hold instead. Held pledges carry no shipping charge until they clear.

Each pledge is a page in Notion, payments and declines sit in Stripe, and the wave rules and shipping rates are documents in Google Drive. Backers write in by email, and the freight forwarder sends rate changes. When a hold clears, the pledge rejoins the walk in its priority place, and that can push a different pledge out of a slot it already had. Planning by hand, it is easy to move only the pledge that changed.

Who works in the room

The fulfillment room has two agents. Myco is the default, so any question about a pledge's wave or hold reaches it unnamed; it reads Stripe through a lasting grant the finance lead approved for this room and writes to Notion only after the fulfillment lead approves. Ryan takes the draft allocation and the close-out, because checking a sheet against the records is its specialty, and it drafts the backer notes too. When a re-walk moves a backer, Myco mentions Ryan in the thread with the pledge, the old wave and the new one.

Walking the pledges, wave by wave

The wave rules, priority order, zone rates and hold reasons are written into the room guidelines, along with one standing instruction: the three refunded pledges sit outside this run and are never written.

Every change runs the walk again

A change runs the walk from the top, not just for the pledges it names. A cleared card puts a pledge back into wave 1 ahead of a lower-priority one, which drops to wave 2, which may push another into wave 3. Myco shows each pledge that moved, why, and what it displaced, so the lead approves the whole chain at once and backer support knows exactly who to write to.

Rate changes and holds interact more quietly. A new zone rate changes shipping on every placed pledge in that zone, but a held pledge's shipping stays at zero whatever its zone until it clears and is placed. At close-out, Ryan lists the Notion pages again and sums from what they say now, rather than from totals carried through the thread.

What the checks catch

• A refunded pledge from the out-of-scope set written to by mistake
• A pledge displaced from its slot by a cleared hold that the draft never moved
• A held pledge carrying a shipping charge from its zone
• An add-on balance paid in Stripe while the pledge page still shows it on hold
• Close-out totals taken from earlier messages instead of the pages as they stand

What stays with people

• Approving every wave assignment and hold before Notion is written
• Deciding exceptions, such as a backer who asks to ship with a later wave
• Sending every note to a backer, which Ryan prepares as a draft in Gmail
• Signing the close-out before the manifest goes to the warehouse

Integrations in this workflow

Kylon is not a pledge manager or a fulfillment system, and it does not replace either. It sits across the pages, payment records and inboxes the team already uses, and keeps the coordination between them in the room.

• Gmail
• Google Drive
• Notion
• Slack
• Stripe

• Notion holds a page per pledge with its tier, add-ons, zone, wave, hold reason and amounts
• Stripe shows each pledge's payments, declines and clearances
• Google Drive keeps the wave rules, the priority order, the zone rates and the coordinator's draft allocation
• Gmail carries backer questions, and every reply is a draft backer support sends
• Slack is where finance posts clearances and the logistics lead posts rate changes

Where to start

Start with the pledges for one wave. Connect the Notion database of pledge pages and give the room a lasting grant on Stripe, then make one rule explicit in the room guidelines: every change re-runs the full walk, held pledges ship at zero, and the fulfillment lead approves every move before Notion is written.

“No pledge moves without a reason the backer can be told.”

Set it up with your agent

Open a new Room, add your agent and paste this prompt. It connects the tools, builds the App with you and asks for your rules one step at a time, and nothing goes out until a person approves it.