A Leeds father who raised more than £42,000 in memory of his daughter has launched a new purpose-led business designed to support children’s charities long into the future.
When 11-year-old Matilda Pritchard passed away suddenly in April 2024, her father, Steve, and their family channelled their grief into fundraising. Inspired by Matilda’s passion for litter picking and protecting the environment, they set out to support local and national causes in her name.
Now, Steve, a former digital agency owner, is taking that commitment a step further by embedding charitable giving directly into his newest venture, Leadquity.
Leadquity is a B2B referral platform that helps digital agencies generate business through trusted recommendations rather than traditional lead generation methods. From day one, the company will donate 30% of its profits to children’s charities in honour of Matilda.
Steve said: “When Matilda died, I desperately needed something positive to focus on. The fundraising became a channel for my grief. It gave us something to work towards as a family and helped us feel that, despite everything, we could still make a difference.
“As the fundraising developed, I realised I didn’t want that impact to stop once we’d reached a target. I wanted to build something that could continue generating support for children’s charities every single day.”
The initial charities supported through Leadquity focus directly on Matilda’s love for the environment and the challenges she faced as an autistic girl. Steve is also in the process of establishing Matilda’s Legacy as a registered charity to raise funds for organisations supporting children and young adults with special educational needs and disabilities.
Matilda, affectionately known as ‘Tills’, passed away in her sleep from an undiagnosed heart condition called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC).
In the months following her passing, the Pritchard family launched a fundraising initiative for Keep Britain Tidy. Their initial goal was to raise £11,213 in honour of Matilda’s birthday on 11 February 2013.
After surpassing that figure within weeks, they raised their target to £42,000 to fund the charity’s Eco-Schools programme for five years, covering the time Matilda would have spent in secondary school.
While driving the fundraising efforts, Steve continued running his digital agency. However, balancing work responsibilities with grief eventually led him to step back from the business at the end of 2025.
Following a short break, Steve focused on creating a solution to a problem he had faced for years as an agency owner: securing reliable leads without relying on cold calls or costly lead-generation tactics.
Developed alongside a specialist software engineer, Leadquity connects digital agencies with freelancers, consultants, and industry influencers who recommend services to their own networks. Referrers earn a commission on successful connections, while agencies only pay for validated leads.
Steve added: “Losing Matilda changed our outlook completely. Of course I still need to work and make money, but business absolutely can be a force for good. I don’t want fundraising to be something that we only do on the side; I wanted to build it into the DNA of work too.”
