The idea
Having four children go through school (two of them still are) I have always had great admiration for the small army of parent and teacher volunteers on the many parent teacher associations working tirelessly to raise school funds. It takes an enormous amount of work to organise even simple fetes and the funds raised are often not large and certainly not considering the volume of volunteer hours required. I have never had the time to get involved with school PTA's and if I am honest nor the inclination, but that did lead to me feeling a bit guilty about my lack of helping!
Back in 2013 I was aware that the school fundraising market in the UK was monopolised by large commercial
fundraising companies. These companies are often perceived to be charitable but in fact they retain at least 50% of every donation they receive. The biggest 'player' is easyfundraising which looks very much like a charity even using a domain name with a .org.uk extension. They have a commercial partnership with ParentKind which is the UK's largest PTA charity and as such are heavily marketed to UK schools by them. No one offered a way to bypass the commercial fundraisers so I thought a charity could maybe do a better job and provide some choice.
I knew that the technology already existed to make a really simple online platform to raise funds for schools in a very efficient way and that it could also be done using a format which would not require users to register their details or set up accounts before they shopped, in turn this would result in a faster and simpler website.
After some thought I designed a system which requires minimal maintenance, is fully secure, encrypted and most importantly because we don't need to pay any staff (or make any profit) raises at least three times as much money as all of the other current UK fund raising websites. It was also built in such a way that it works seamlessly on mobile phones with a super-fast version that can be locked to the users home page with our app-icon, but without having to physically install a native app. This saves a lot of money and removes any chance of 'bugs' interfering
with the tracking of donations. We don't use marketing or advertising to promote the charity rather relying on positive word of mouth, and we make sure that it is the schools and children that get the full benefit of all the money raised. The site can be used by anyone at anytime to do good for schools, by doing no more than their daily purchases (that might be dad at work on a building site, granny in New Zealand and uncles, aunties and friends in any far flung location so long as they have an internet connection) We don't store any personal information from visitors to the site, nor do we try and market anything else to them.
The entire charity was literally created in a garden shed and it is still run from that same shed today!
What we do
School Angel provides equipment to schools to aid the advancement of learning and the promotion of well being through physical exercise. Initially schools used funds raised to buy books, computer equipment and other reading materials for education and sport-related equipment, or funding of specialised sport sessions to promote physical well being, however as the charity has grown and schools have raised large sums of money they frequently fund raise for classroom or playground improvements.
The charity also helps disadvantaged children with a discretionary fund administered by the trustees. One of the obstacles which current children's charities face is getting appropriate help to the right children at the right time. This is where School Angel is unique. Working with schools we rely on school teachers to identify children in their care who are disadvantaged. This may be through a physical or mental disability of through social deprivation. Often such children fail to be identified through other funding bodies through a combination of fear of stigma, or simply not falling into the right category to receive additional help. We believe that highly targeted and timely help to such children can make the difference between that child succeeding and being happy at school or falling behind.
It is far harder and generally much more expensive to try and regain lost ground in a child's education than making sure they stay on the right track in the first place. Simple interventions range from discreetly funding a school trip for a child otherwise unable to attend through to funding a specialist piece of equipment to enable a child with a disability attend a mainstream school.
How we do it
The fundamentals for School Angel were that number one it had to be a charity, and secondly I wanted the website to be super easy to use, no advertising, no logging in or passwords, no spam emails etc.
The charity generates funds through a process called affiliate marketing which is a technique many companies use to promote their sales. Basically businesses agree to donate a percentage of their profit in return for customers being directed to their website and then making a purchase. For the business it acts as an alternative to them having to pay for advertising to drive sales to their websites. They only donate to School Angel if a purchase is completed. The payments made can vary from less than 1% of the total purchase price right up to about 10%.
Visitors to the site have the choice of either 'helping all disadvantaged children' (when the funds raised by their purchases are paid into a discretionary fund administered by the charities trustees, and used to help children from any of our registered schools who have been identified as disadvantaged, from either physical / mental disability or through social deprivation) or visitors can opt to donate the whole amount to a particular school.
School Angel has been set up to be as simple to run and administer as possible. School Angel is a foundation which is registered with the charities commission as a charitable incorporated organisation. It has a board of trustees and full accountability. We achieved full charitable status in England & Wales in September 2013. We remain the only fully registered school fundraising charity in the UK today.
Chris Cottam 2019
Having four children go through school (two of them still are) I have always had great admiration for the small army of parent and teacher volunteers on the many parent teacher associations working tirelessly to raise school funds. It takes an enormous amount of work to organise even simple fetes and the funds raised are often not large and certainly not considering the volume of volunteer hours required. I have never had the time to get involved with school PTA's and if I am honest nor the inclination, but that did lead to me feeling a bit guilty about my lack of helping!
Back in 2013 I was aware that the school fundraising market in the UK was monopolised by large commercial
fundraising companies. These companies are often perceived to be charitable but in fact they retain at least 50% of every donation they receive. The biggest 'player' is easyfundraising which looks very much like a charity even using a domain name with a .org.uk extension. They have a commercial partnership with ParentKind which is the UK's largest PTA charity and as such are heavily marketed to UK schools by them. No one offered a way to bypass the commercial fundraisers so I thought a charity could maybe do a better job and provide some choice.
I knew that the technology already existed to make a really simple online platform to raise funds for schools in a very efficient way and that it could also be done using a format which would not require users to register their details or set up accounts before they shopped, in turn this would result in a faster and simpler website.
After some thought I designed a system which requires minimal maintenance, is fully secure, encrypted and most importantly because we don't need to pay any staff (or make any profit) raises at least three times as much money as all of the other current UK fund raising websites. It was also built in such a way that it works seamlessly on mobile phones with a super-fast version that can be locked to the users home page with our app-icon, but without having to physically install a native app. This saves a lot of money and removes any chance of 'bugs' interfering
with the tracking of donations. We don't use marketing or advertising to promote the charity rather relying on positive word of mouth, and we make sure that it is the schools and children that get the full benefit of all the money raised. The site can be used by anyone at anytime to do good for schools, by doing no more than their daily purchases (that might be dad at work on a building site, granny in New Zealand and uncles, aunties and friends in any far flung location so long as they have an internet connection) We don't store any personal information from visitors to the site, nor do we try and market anything else to them.
The entire charity was literally created in a garden shed and it is still run from that same shed today!
What we do
School Angel provides equipment to schools to aid the advancement of learning and the promotion of well being through physical exercise. Initially schools used funds raised to buy books, computer equipment and other reading materials for education and sport-related equipment, or funding of specialised sport sessions to promote physical well being, however as the charity has grown and schools have raised large sums of money they frequently fund raise for classroom or playground improvements.
The charity also helps disadvantaged children with a discretionary fund administered by the trustees. One of the obstacles which current children's charities face is getting appropriate help to the right children at the right time. This is where School Angel is unique. Working with schools we rely on school teachers to identify children in their care who are disadvantaged. This may be through a physical or mental disability of through social deprivation. Often such children fail to be identified through other funding bodies through a combination of fear of stigma, or simply not falling into the right category to receive additional help. We believe that highly targeted and timely help to such children can make the difference between that child succeeding and being happy at school or falling behind.
It is far harder and generally much more expensive to try and regain lost ground in a child's education than making sure they stay on the right track in the first place. Simple interventions range from discreetly funding a school trip for a child otherwise unable to attend through to funding a specialist piece of equipment to enable a child with a disability attend a mainstream school.
How we do it
The fundamentals for School Angel were that number one it had to be a charity, and secondly I wanted the website to be super easy to use, no advertising, no logging in or passwords, no spam emails etc.
The charity generates funds through a process called affiliate marketing which is a technique many companies use to promote their sales. Basically businesses agree to donate a percentage of their profit in return for customers being directed to their website and then making a purchase. For the business it acts as an alternative to them having to pay for advertising to drive sales to their websites. They only donate to School Angel if a purchase is completed. The payments made can vary from less than 1% of the total purchase price right up to about 10%.
Visitors to the site have the choice of either 'helping all disadvantaged children' (when the funds raised by their purchases are paid into a discretionary fund administered by the charities trustees, and used to help children from any of our registered schools who have been identified as disadvantaged, from either physical / mental disability or through social deprivation) or visitors can opt to donate the whole amount to a particular school.
School Angel has been set up to be as simple to run and administer as possible. School Angel is a foundation which is registered with the charities commission as a charitable incorporated organisation. It has a board of trustees and full accountability. We achieved full charitable status in England & Wales in September 2013. We remain the only fully registered school fundraising charity in the UK today.
Chris Cottam 2019