Are you one of the millions of Americans suffering from SFRS, or school fund-raising syndrome? Do you really not want any cookie dough or calendars but find it hard to turn down the students you love? Do you hear the Jaws theme in your head when you see a child approaching you with a catalog full of candy tins? Then you’ll like this.
SFRS survivor Tania Mulry, 37, has developed an iPhone app that makes fund-raising quick, easy and effective. It’s called EdRover; it will roll out early in 2011 and it will let you donate to your favorite school just by checking in to local businesses through GPS while you run the errands you already had on your to-do list.
“I’ve been school fund-raising, reluctantly, since my youngest was six months old,” Mulry explained, telling the story of dropping her now 10-year-old son off at daycare and being handed a wrapping paper catalog. Now with three young sons, and bombarded with fund-raising initiatives from multiple schools, scouts and church, the former mobile marketing executive threw her hands up. Then she got to work.
EdRover works like this: moms, dads, students, relatives and community members download the free application. (After it rolls out on the iPhone, EdRover will be introduced for other devices.) They use it to find local stores that have signed up to make small donations to schools when people use the app to check in at their locations. Then the shoppers head to one of the participating stores for their usual grocery shopping, pushing a button while they’re there so that their presence is tallied. Cha-ching.
Businesses, who will contribute to EdRover to earn placement in the app, will determine how much each check-in is worth, from a few cents to a dollar or more. Mulry hopes business owners will be attracted to the opportunity to present incentives for shoppers to stop by.
EdRover’s users will be able to choose from 99,000 pre-programmed schools to receive the donation from their check-in.
The fund-raisers we’re all familiar with make up a $4 billion annual industry, Mulry says. But the schools see less than $2 billion of that. “So if you were to buy $100 of candles, it would be twice as good to give $100 to the school,” she said. “Unless you really love candles.”
You see, it’s not just about cutting down on student sales. It’s also about recognizing the immense need that schools face and about giving them an efficient, completely free fund-raising option. Just recently, Mulry said, she was at her son’s school in Stevenson Ranch, Calif. cutting out rectangles of construction paper because the school couldn’t pay for index cards.
“There are 75 million students nationwide,” she added. “Think about all the people they’re connected to.”