The system of record for referrals, mentorship, and relationship-driven outcomes.
Your employees make referrals, mentor juniors, and share connections every week — but none of it is tracked, measured, or rewarded. Pay It Forward changes that.
The problem
Referrals drive 30–50% of hires at most companies, yet the people who make them get zero credit. Mentorship happens in DMs and coffee chats with no paper trail. CSR reports cite “culture of giving” with nothing to back it up. The impact is real — the proof is missing.
How it works for companies
Step 1
Employees thank each other
When someone helps a colleague — a referral, advice, an introduction — they acknowledge it in one tap.
Step 2
Chains form automatically
Each acknowledgment links to the next. The platform tracks who helped whom and what outcomes followed.
Step 3
Leaders see the impact
HR and managers get reports showing referral patterns, mentorship activity, and cross-team connections.
What companies get
- Available now
Referral chain tracking
Who referred whom, what happened next, and which referrals actually converted. Every link traceable back to the person who made the introduction.
- Available now
Mentorship logging
Sessions logged. Career outcomes recorded. See which mentors are driving real promotions, skill gains, and retention.
- Available now
Chain visualization
Interactive force-directed graphs show how gratitude ripples through your organization. Click any node to see the full story.
- Available now
AI-powered matching
Claude suggests concrete, doable ways employees can pay it forward — matched to their skills and their colleagues’ needs.
- Available now
Impact Score per employee
A single number that captures each person’s contribution: acts given, outcomes created, chain depth, and completion rate.
How we’re different
| Feature | Pay It Forward | Traditional referral tools | Bonusly / Kudos |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chain tracking | |||
| Downstream outcomes | |||
| AI-powered matching | |||
| Cross-team visibility | Limited | Limited | |
| CSR/ESG reporting | |||
| Free for employees |
Built for the teams that own relationship ROI
Built for HR, Talent Acquisition, D&I, and CSR teams.
HR & People Ops
Surface the quiet helpers in your company. Reward them properly in performance reviews.
Talent Acquisition
Track referral-to-hire rates with real attribution. Find who actually moves the needle on sourcing.
D&I / DEI
Audit referral and mentorship patterns for inclusivity. Find the gaps you couldn’t measure before.
CSR / ESG
Turn the mentorship and pro-bono work employees already do into board-ready impact numbers.
See which teams are most connected.
Track referral-to-hire rates. Identify mentorship gaps. Export quarterly impact reports. Every number traces back to a real chain of acts in the consumer product you see today.
A chain of gratitude
Started last quarter · 5 links · 5 people touched
Referral
A Team Lead → A Designer
Referred for a product design role
Advice
The Designer → A New Grad
Sat down for a 30-minute portfolio review
Introduction
The New Grad → A Product Manager
Made a warm introduction to a hiring team
Mentorship
The PM → A Career Switcher
Scheduled a monthly mentor call
Why recognition matters
Companies using peer recognition programs see 31% lower turnover. Pay It Forward makes those connections visible and measurable.
Figure from Gallup's research on employee recognition.
Security & compliance
Today
SOC 2 certified infrastructure
Your data runs on SOC 2 Type II certified infrastructure (Vercel, AWS, Neon). Pay It Forward is pursuing its own SOC 2 certification as we scale our enterprise offering.
Encryption in transit
All traffic uses HTTPS with modern TLS. Database connections run over TLS to Neon’s managed Postgres.
Least-privilege access
Admin access to production is gated by SSO to our internal tools. Application secrets live in managed environment vaults.
Coming soon
SSO (Google / Okta / Azure AD)
Currently Google, GitHub, and LinkedIn OAuth for individuals. Org-level SSO via SAML is coming.
SAML & SCIM
Coming soon. We’ll ship SAML and SCIM together so provisioning and deprovisioning are automatic.
EU data residency
Coming soon. The consumer app is currently US-hosted via Neon’s US regions.
SOC 2 Type II for Pay It Forward
Pursuing. We’ll begin the observation window after the first Teams pilot closes.
Simple, transparent pricing.
Plans start at $3/user/month for teams of 50+.
Custom pricing for larger organizations.
Free pilot available for qualifying teams.
Book a demo to discuss the right plan for your team size and integration needs.
Pilot with your team
We’re taking a small number of pilot teams to prove the model. If your company has a formal referral, mentorship, or CSR program, we’d love to talk.
Prefer email? Write to us directly at hello@payitfwd.app.