Parents of school kids -- you're excused from the weekend bake sale.
Box top drives, door-to-door candy sales, and yes, the eternal bake sale have long been the favored way to raise money for perpetually strapped K-12 schools. But a new online fundraising scheme aims to direct a percentage of online sales to local schools.
Almost a dozen new Net companies have sprung up to ease education's financial woes -- and help merchants capture the mouthwateringly massive family market. When parents make purchases at e-retailers a percentage of the sale is rebated to a specified school. Even minus the cut taken by the middleman Net agencies, the online fundraising process could mean big bucks for little effort.
"It's a valuable idea," said Tim Sullivan, publisher of PTOtoday.com, a resource site for student-parent groups. "At PTOtoday we look at the work-reward equation. These programs can generate rewards for comparatively little work."
Parents weary of attending car washes may be delighted with the ease of the cash-for-school systems. Parents log on to the school-support site and choose the school they want to support. From there links lead to participating merchants.
Fundraising sites claim it's a win-win situation for schools and parents.
"Generally school fundraising is very inefficient," said David Greene, CEO of Schoolcash.com. "Kids and parents do a lot of work for little payoff. We're not offering overpriced products sold door-to-door or ordered in the classroom and wasting class time. All of our fundraising is done out of the classroom and parents can order products they'd shop [for] anyway."
Cash-flow needs in US schools have traditionally been met with special events, corporate programs like General Mills' Box Tops for Education, and product sales from which sponsors kick back a commission to schools.
Analog programs like Scrip were front-runners of Web fundraising sites, returning a portion of purchases at participating stores to schools. But Web-based programs look to be more streamlined and accessible than older, unwieldy fundraising methods.
Nonetheless, the programs are not without shortfalls. Net fundraising sites are for-profit enterprises that take a percentage of merchants' rebates themselves, generally about one-fourth of rebates that range from 1 percent to 25 percent of the purchase price.
"There are over 110,000 schools out there and to reach them costs money," said Rea Callender, founder and CEO of Schoolpop.com. "We develop relationships with schools and merchants, we make posters and flyers and banners. We have four million flyers going out Monday -- that's a lot of printing and mailing!"
And flyers may be another worry. Educators and parents are increasingly leery of commercialized classrooms invaded by Coke machines, school bus advertisements, and Channel One television. Informational flyers and themed catalogs sent to schools by Net fundraising sites end up in kids' backpacks, raising concerns about using classroom time to market to kids.
"You can call this commercialization but we put money in the schools so they can better educate kids," said Gary Blackford, CEO of shopforschool.com. "Kids don't have to do the fundraising here, and neither do the parents -- all they have to do is go online to buy products they'd buy anyway and watch the money flow to the school of their choice."
"I don't believe these plans cross the line of commercializing the classroom," said Sullivan. "These are companies like J.C. Penney or Amazon.com, not the Barney store. The companies aren't selling to kids, they're trying to reach their parents."
It remains to be seen whether the Net fundraisers will generate the hoped-for dollar amounts. Most of the sites launched either late last spring or this summer, and are only now gearing up to take a big bite of the 1999-2000 school year. None of the companies contacted would release dollar amounts that have thus far been given to schools, and none were confident enough to venture a guess at the projected take.
One thing's for sure, however -- with hungry online companies all looking to grab market share, attract good PR with philanthropy, and boost customer loyalty, shopping-for-a-cause schemes will likely proliferate on the Web.
"This is a merchants' dream come true," said Karen Lake, CEO of Internet strategy resource StrategyWeek.com. "All they have to do is sign up a partner, offer a bit of an incentive to buy, and let the fundraisers do all the marketing for them. It's a huge market and no risk. Oh yes, we'll see more of these sites."
