Before Educabana, Michael Chavannes had an idea to help schools with their fundraising efforts. He contacted a fellow teacher, Brian Jaeger, and together they founded Innovative School Funding. The idea wasn't to make a huge profit or spend time away from their spouses doing "internet stuff." Rather, they both saw the funding struggles of the local school districts and they wanted to help.

Of course, the potential for a system like ISF is HUGE. If every family in a district spends about $1000 a year in qualifying online purchases (most spend way more), then the school district should get around $50 per family in commissions. A thousand families in your district? More? It's on 24/7 and you never have to show up at school and pass out overpriced merchandise.

We had a lot of fun with the math, but the main hurdle is that a passive fundraiser like ISF needs someone promoting it, and it needs to be visible on the main page of an official website. A lot of school districts signed up just thinking the idea was so good that the money would seemingly start sending itself to them. If you want to use ISF with your school, you should contact us, but you should also realize that you'll need to promote it a bit for it to work.

Innovatiive School Funding is a perfect fundraising idea. It might be a few years before its time -- some people probably like the personal touch of the traditional fundraiser, complete with cheesy top-seller prizes and the need to go and bother all the neighbors. Actually, it was fun... sometimes. But if you're burned out from the constant fundraisers all year long, then try out a passive fundraising solution.