Whenever I set up a Stitch event to tell new members about Stitch, it's pretty guaranteed that one of the questions I'll get asked will be about about the status level badges you see next to every single Stitch profile. 

This leads to questions about what those status levels mean, how members earn Membership Points, and what Stitch Rewards are all about.

The most important question I get asked, however, is about why we built things this way in the first place. And usually, once I answer that question, everyone tells me they find the whole idea of status levels, points, and rewards much easier to understand.
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Put simply, status levels in Stitch were created to help us do two things:

Unfortunately not every person in the world who signs up to Stitch can be trusted to behave positively. Scammers will try to create accounts on Stitch, for example, which is why we have our verification system. 

But even people who aren't scammers won't always use Stitch in a way that benefits everyone else in the community. Back in the early days of Stitch, we discovered that it only took one bad apple to sign up and send a hundred spammy messages to other members of the community to ruin things for everyone.

That's why we put limits on how many messages a new member can send to other members. 

At the same time, however, we wanted to allow trustworthy members to connect with as many members in their area as possible ... because that's how new communities most often get built!

We needed a way to tell which members could be trusted most with extra access to Stitch. And we wanted a way to recognize and appreciate those members who make the biggest contributions to improving the lives of other members in the community.

Stitch Membership Points and Status Levels are how we do that.
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The basic idea of the Stitch Rewards Program is simple: any time you make a positive contribution to the Community, you earn Membership Points. 

The more points you earn, the higher your Status Level on Stitch.

And over time, your points can also be used to give you Stitch Rewards, which is the Community's way of saying thanks to our superstar members. 

(But it's important to note that these rewards are just tokens of appreciation, not anything materially significant. The real rewards from Stitch come from knowing you're improving not just your own life, but the lives of those around you, by the activities and social connections you form through Stitch.)

Status 

Your Status reflects how much you have contributed within a 12 month period. 

The more points you earn, the higher your status climbs, and the more your trust increases within the Community. Some of the things that members with higher trust levels can do include:

Rewards

Your membership Rewards track the total number of points you have earned during the lifetime of your Stitch membership. These can be redeemed for real-world gifts and rewards.
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OK, so the article above gave you a bit of an overview of why the program exists and how it works at a high level. That's enough for many people, but if you'd like to know more about the actual details of the program, we've written the following articles to explain how it all works: