Online Fundraising and Internet Services For Schools
School Shopping Online by Cathy Sims – 6/2000-
It is estimated that online shoppers spent $4 billion over the 1999 holiday season, double what is was the previous year. Some predict that number to double again this year. Utilizing online fundraising programs that give you a percentage of the sale may be one of the smartest moves your school makes. Listed below are some of the key players in this emerging fundraising arena, and services they. offer.
YourSchoolShop.com, a subsidiary of GreaterGood.com Inc., was the first company to offer an online shopping program that benefits K-12 schools, according to their marketing director, Sheri Pewitt. “Since the site launched in August of 1998, the YourSchoolShop.com program has grown from 30 to over 1,000 school partners across the country,” says Pewitt.
“Our team works closely with its school partners to make online shopping on behalf of a school easy and rewarding. We focus on optimizing and developing a platform that will support thousands of partner schools with a compelling ecommerce offering,” states Pewitt.
YourSchoolShop.com developed proprietary “consumer-centric technology” that makes online shopping easy for your school, according to Pewitt, because it includes:
- The ability to generate a customer shopping village for any school. Schools can choose the merchants they want in their customer shopping village and exclude others quickly and accurately.Cross-store search: Proprietary technology allows users to enter the YSS shopping village and search for any specified product. This minimizes time searching to find a specific item. Like a search engine, users simply type in an item and within seconds, are served up product matches along with store descriptions and price. One click on the most appealing item and it is ready to drop into a shopping cart and go. This patent pending cross-store search function increases the likelihood of shoppers finding what they are looking for.
- One click promotional linking : With this unique back-end coding system, YSS can send out promotional offers via e-mail that will bring its users with predefined school preferences straight to the special offer while keeping their designated school beneficiary code intact. This reduces the number of clicks required.
- MyDeskTopShop tool makes it one-click easy to shop directly from your desktop at nearly 80 brand-name online retailers such as Amazon.com, JCPenney, Birthday Express and OfficeMax.com. And up to 30% of every purchase you make through MyDesktopShop goes to your school, at no extra cost to you.
“We utilize dedicated account managers to support schools in program marketing,” adds Pewitt. “We provide free printed materials such as bookmarks, flyers and posters to promote the shopping program. We offer traffic-driving, consumer-marketing programs to generate awareness of the YourSchoolShop.com program including a current mix of: broadcast, print and electronic media; event sponsorships; and press releases.”
“And, because the Internet is a round-the-clock, 365-days-a-year medium, YourSchoolShop.com staff are on-call via phone (toll free), email, fax or regular mail at all times to ensure customers’ complete satisfaction.” “We also offer a service where participating schools can receive a free Web site. The school can post its Calendar of Events, Staff Directory, Mission Statement, School Profile, Announcements, and much more. Schools can easily update their Web site information right over the Internet without needing a technical background.”
Here’s what some of YourSchoolShop.com’s school partners are saying: “This was a new program at our School and I was not sure what to expect but the response from parents and alumni has been tremendous and YSS has been great to work with! We earned $2,426.58 this quarter — Lisa Doherty, Director of Development, John Thomas Dye School Los Angeles, CA.
“Our first quarter with YourSchoolShop.com generated $2,683. Our students are psyched and the parents are shocked at both how easy it is to shop via YourSchoolShop.com and how quickly these funds were generated.” — Rob Hunt, Washington Montessori School, CT
“With a few monthly newsletters, the parents are proving themselves to be quite the successful shoppers. This quarter we received a whopping $2558 from YourSchoolShop.com. — Marsha Abel, Bellarmine Preparatory School, WA GreaterGood.com/YourSchoolShop.com can be reached at (206) 268-5459, sheri@yourschoolshop.com, www.your schoolshop.com
Family Education Network Acquires schoolcash.com
SchoolCash.com is an online shopping site dedicated to fundraising, founded in 1999 by former school-related marketing executives and parents. In March 2000, SchoolCash was acquired by FamilyEducation Network, the largest K-12 Internet community for parents, educators, and students. The FamilyEducation Network, headquartered in Boston, was founded in 1990 and has grown to include a number of K-12 websites. These are: familyeducation.com, myschoolonline.com, infoplease.com, funbrain.com, and teachervision.com.
With the support of leading education associations, such as National PTA and AASA FamilyEducation Network has worked to connect parents, educators and students to the resources that can help them succeed. And they believe the SchoolCash.com program fully supports this mission by providing schools, PTAs, or other educational organizations with much-needed financial support. Together, the companies will expand FamilyEducation Network’s number-one position by providing parents with the opportunity to donate a percentage of their online transactions to local schools. By combining the two companies, FamilyEducation Network accelerates its rapid business momentum in the Internet education space and continues to introduce new value-added services to the American education community that serves parents, students, and teachers alike.
“Fundraising needs for schools never cease and the Internet provides a new tool for parents and school supporters to generate funds with minimal effort,” said Jonathan Carson, Chairman and CEO, FamilyEducation Network. “We will bring SchoolCash.com’s e-fundraising platform to the thousands of schools already connected to FamilyEducation Network with an audience generating over 60 million monthly page views of usage.”
The SchoolCash.com purchase follows the addition of FunBrain.com, a Chicago-based, award-winning interactive learning and edutainment website that links children, parents and teachers. With FunBrain.com., teachers have access to more than 40 educational games, each customizable for varying levels of ability and tied to national curriculum standards. They can also register for QuizLabS, a database and quiz library of thousands of quizzes, searchable by grade level. FunBrain.com has experienced high growth in site visitation as its page views have grown from 12 to 35 million per month.
Visitors to any one of the FamilyEducation Network websites can link to SchoolCash.com and purchase from any of over 200 well known participating online merchants including: Buy.com, Gap.com, eToys, Pets.com, Cooking.com and a Virtual School Fair (sm) set up in association with Amazon.com. Schools receive up to 20 percent of online purchases made through SchoolCash.com.
The SchoolCash.com team has used its over 30 years of experience in school-related marketing to design the SchoolCash program to be as easy and rewarding for schools as possible.
There are no mark-ups and no hidden costs for supporters or your school.
Sound too good to be true? See for yourself! Visit www.schoolcash.com today!
Check out these sites also: familyeducation.com, teachervision.com, my schoolonline.com, infoplease.com, and funbrain.com
The Many Advantages of Online Fundraising
Universal’s efundraising.com, another pioneer in the industry, offers a user-friendly system to help schools make money with the internet. Your group first creates a personalized fundraising web page by filling out the online form at eFundraising.com. Participants collect e-mails from family, neighbors, relatives, etc. using supplied e-Mail forms. Personalized emails are sent to supporters to invite them to visit your web page. As supporters visit your web page and buy products, your group earns 40% profit on products sold. Products are shipped directly to the buyers, and you get a check at the end of the campaign.
There are many advantages to online fundraising, in addition to the money. Universal points out that there’s no selling required of the participants, no distribution of products or collection of money required. And it’s interactive and educational as everyone is getting familiarized with the Net.
To find out more about Universal’s eFundraising program you may call 1-800-561-8388 or visit: www.efundraising.com
Schoolpop.com partners with QSP
A subsidiary of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., QSP has linked its sales force and fundraising programs with Schoolpop.com, the nation’s largest online school fundraiser company, serving 16,000 schools.
“We returned over half a million dollars to 5,000 schools so far,” said Schoolpop’s founder, Rea Callendar, a former teacher and prior CEO of an edutainment company. Schoolpop offers schools up to 20% of sales made through their online site.
QSP helps schools raise funds through product sales and magazine subscriptions.
As part of the alliance, QSP will help build awareness of Schoolpop’s online fundraising programs among schools while QSP’s magazine subscription services, World’s Finest Chocolate products and fundraising services will be promoted online through Schoolpop.
Other online fundraising companies include Helpaschool.com offering free internet connection and up to 25% of sales to schools, according to its founder, Hays Waldrop.
And there’s OurSchoolFundraiser.com, which, according to its marketing director, Larry Rivitz, will split the profit 50-50 with participating schools.
Since all projections indicate more consumers will be buying online, get your feet wet, surf the net and help your school tap those online dollars.
