Schoolpop.com aims to open school doors to e-commerce

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Oct, 1999

Schoolpop.com (Menlo Park, CA) just may make K-12 schools a little fonder of e-commerce. The shopping site, which offers flowers, pet supplies, clothing, books, food, music and numerous other items, is set up to give a portion of each sale to a user's school of choice.

The company has negotiated each deal with vendors individually, so the percentage of the sale going to Schoolpop.com varies. An agreement with Snap.com also allows Schoolpop to earn advertising revenue with each search. In every case, Schoolpop.com keeps 25% of their share and distributes 75% to schools with quarterly reports.

Schools must agree to participate in the program if a user is to be able to identify them as a recipient. Rea Callender, president and ceo, says that 5,000 schools across the country are currently listed on the service. Recruitment is exclusively through phone calls (an effort which requires approximately two-thirds of their 90 employees), and agreements are verbal. Schoolpop follows up by sending a participating school a marketing kit to encourage their community members to use the service and assigning them a marketing representative. While schools can supply a link from their homepage, the marketing campaign drives people to schoolpop.com. Schoolpop does not involve itself in defining how funds will be used.

Callender says the company is likely to expand to higher education in the first part of 2000. The company is financed with $6.75 million from venture capital firm Accel Partners (San Francisco, CA).

The company is not alone in its business plan. One competitor, SchoolCash.com, recently launched a similar service. That company earns revenue by charging vendors for access to their buyers.