BellaOnline Forums Education Preschool Education Your thoughts on this as a fundraiser for schools.

My 4 year old just started preschool this past week. A major local grocery store has a program where shoppers register their favorite school and whenever they shop they show their special card and the school gets points based on the amount spent by the shopper. Those points are then redeemed for supplies and equipment for the schools.
It is a great program and provides a lot for local schools.

I want to know your opinions on a similar idea that I had for fundraisers for schools. There is a site called BigCrumbs that pays registrants cash back when they shop at any of hundreds of online stores like eBay, Barnes & Noble, Overstock.com, Half.com, Verizon, HSN, Travelocity, Priceline.com and tons more. It has a referral program where if the registrant shares the program with others, not only does the new referral get cash back on their own purchases, the referrer also gets a commission on every purchase made by the referral. Cash is paid monthly into the member's Paypal acct. which they can set up easily if they don't have one.

Since this program covers so many top online stores, I was thinking it could conceivably be used as a fundraiser for schools and organizations. The school would register itself, then ask parents to also regisiter with the school as the referrer. Parents would get cash back on their own purchases and the school would benefit from the referral commission on said purchases. If those parents then refer friends or family, the school would also get a commission on their purchases up to 5 generations in all. And the school would get the referral commissions forever! So even after that parent no longer has a child enrolled there, the school would still benefit whenever that parent purchases through the BigCrumbs program.

The program is completely free. BigCrumbs gets paid by the stores to send shoppers their way. They then pass that reward onto the BigCrumbs members. And nobody is required to purchase anything. It is a money saving program you use just when you need it. And since everyone benefits, I think people would be glad to use it. Bigcrumbs doesn't share info, spam inboxes, or even ask for credit card info. So there is not worries there.

So, do you think this could work? Any advice? I plan to present the idea (in a more polished way of course) to my dd preschool soon. But I wanted to get advice from others and this was about the only place I could think of to ask. I personally use Bigcrumbs and have found no problems with it. I love it!

You can check out the program's website by going HERE. Keep in mind it isn't marketed as a fundraiser at all by the company. But I really think it could be one.

Advice?

I think it has possibilities. The need to refer people to gain cash back and points may make some people hesitant.

Best,
Candyce

The beauty of this program is that nobody ever has to refer in order to get cash back on their own purchases. If the school bought equipment and supplies through a store affiliated with Bigcrumbs, it would get cash back. The school also benefits from the parents' purchases and the parents benefit from their own purchases. What I am saying is that referring is not a requirement in order to get cash back on your own purchases. If people don't want to share the program with someone else, there are no penalties. But we would hope the school would have lots of parents sign up with them as the referrer because that is the whole point of this fundraiser.
The points thing does not apply to Bigcrumbs. It was only used as an example of what local stores are doing.

Okay, after much thought I have a much more simplified approach.
The school registers with BigCrumbs . Once they do, they will be given a specific URL by BigCrumbs that incorporates their username.
Have parents visit using that URL and choose stores to shop and shop as normal.
The school will get cash back from the purchases of the parents, thus raising funds for the school.

Now with this method, nobody is locked in to having to support that school any longer than they want to. Parents won't get cash back themselves, however.

If a parent goes to BigCrumbs and decides to join so they can get cash back personally, that is up to them. They can do that easily. But that won't be what I will focus on.

So - 1. school registers.
2. Parents shop any of 327 stores through BigCrumbs whenever they want using the school's URL to get there.
3.School benefits by receiving cash back.
4. Parents feel good about helping school.

Does this seem better to you? I plan to present this option to my dd preschool in the morning. So if anyone has any comments, now is a GOOD TIME!