A Pudsey dad who raised more than £42,000 in memory of his daughter has launched a new business that will continue supporting children’s charities for years to come.
When 11-year-old Matilda Pritchard passed away suddenly in April 2024, her dad, Steve, and the rest of the family channelled their grief into fundraising, inspired by Matilda’s love of litter picking and protecting the environment.
Now Steve, a former digital agency owner, is continuing that legacy by building charitable giving into the DNA of a new purpose-led business he’s launching.
Leadquity is a B2B referral platform which helps agencies grow through trusted recommendations, rather than having to rely on expensive and ineffective traditional lead-generating methods.
The company will donate 30% of its profits to children’s charities from day one, in honour of Matilda’s memory.
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.
“Leadquity is that next step. It’s a business that solves a genuine problem for agencies, but it also enables us to help other children and families in Matilda’s name.
“The charitable causes we will support are directly related to Matilda’s passion for the environment, and the challenges she faced as an autistic girl.”
While Leadquity will support a number of causes directly to begin with, Steve is in the process of setting up Matilda’s Legacy as a charity in its own right to raise money for organisations helping children and young adults with special educational needs and disabilities.
Matilda, affectionately known as ‘Tills’, died suddenly in her sleep from an undiagnosed heart condition called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), despite showing no symptoms.
In the months that followed, Steve and his family embarked on their fundraising mission for Keep Britain Tidy, initially aiming to raise £11,213 in recognition of Matilda’s birthday on 11 February 2013.
When that target was reached within weeks, they set the new goal of raising the £42,000 needed to fund the charity’s Eco-Schools programme for five years – the length of time Matilda would have spent at secondary school.
But at the same time Steve was so busy running his own agency and looking after his staff, that he wasn’t looking after himself.
“Two days after Matilda passed, I had to do payroll. I had a client pitch the Thursday after. It was my responsibility as an employer to come in and be a boss. But I was just kicking the grief can down the road.
“At the end of 2025, I reached a fork in the road. I had to make the decision that I couldn’t carry on as I was or I’d be no good to anybody. I had to give up the agency.”
After a few months’ break, Steve decided to put his energy into solving a problem that had frustrated him for several years as an agency owner – the issue of winning decent leads and building a pipeline, without relying on expensive lead generation that rarely lead to new business.
Working with a developer, Leadquity was born. The platform connects digital agencies with freelancers, consultants and influencers who recommend agencies to their own trusted networks. When those recommendations generate qualified business opportunities, the referrer receives a commission while agencies only pay for validated leads.
“Losing Matilda changed our outlook completely,” Steve said. “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.”
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