How Groupon Can Save School Fundraisers

The thought occurred to me when I saw a high profile person on Twitter promoting his daughter’s school fundraiser, that the system is broken.

We have budget-strapped schools telling students to sell wrapping paper for 30 bucks a roll. That does a few things:

1. We create a culture of begging. Kids are basically panhandling so they can go on the evil clown museum field trip next month.
2. We end up with crappy field trips.
3. We pay too much for crappy products we don’t want.
4. As parents we reluctantly end up trying to pawn off bad chocolates to our co-workers so we can support our kids.

The only people really benefiting from any of this are the companies who are distributing their products to schools with a 500% markup.

The solution in my mind is simple.

Groupon currently lets you run a promotion and then they advertise it to their massive network. They take a cut of all your sales. Customers get a deal, the business gets new clients, and Groupon gets paid!

This is how it works:

As a business owner I offer 50% off food at my restaurant. I’m now offering my meals for half of what I normally charge. Then Groupon comes in and takes 50% of that 50% to run the promotion. Basically I’m selling my meals for 25% of what I normally charge, but I’m willing to do it because I’m exposing more customers to my business. If I give them a good experience they’ll come back and the initial loss will really pay off down the road.

What if Groupon allowed those business to choose schools to participate in the promotion and give a portion of the proceeds to that school?

1. Groupon would immediately expand their reach because students would be promoting it directly (likely in person) to people who may not otherwise know about Groupon. Specifically grandparents or other less tech-savvy relatives.
2. The business running the promotion does something great for the community, increases business even more, not to mention the great PR move.
3. Students will be able to confidently sell coupons for 50% off a nice meal at a favorite restaurant because they know it’s worth buying. The “pity buy” won’t be a necessity anymore.
4. It gives school fundraisers a viral capability which is impossible with the current structure.
5. Parents can easily support their kids’ efforts, because let’s face it, we’re all passing around the Groupon deals anyway.

What do you think? Does this have some merit? I’d appreciate you Tweeting or Facebooking or Whatever-ing this if you think it has a leg to stand on. I think it does.