School Shares

Fundraising is an essential component of successful extracurricular school programs. But let's face it, fundraising is a dirty word to most school leaders and coaches, with good reason. Generating extra funds requires know-how, connections, and manual labor, especially for school bookkeepers. Group funding initiatives desperately need organization, security, and marketing expertise to ensure school program success year after year.

Enter School Shares, a premiere software solution specifically developed to manage, digitize, and grow extracurricular program funding for schools. It provides schools with one eCommerce store that hosts all funding initiatives in one place, giving parents and supporters a trusted site where they can sponsor programs, buy spirit gear or donate to their favorite teams. Schools Shares builds a legacy system for school programs storing all funding efforts and success metrics in one place. It provides funding transparency for leadership, makes repeatable processes a breeze, and eliminates the burden placed on leadership when staff turnover occurs.

School Shares equips group leaders with the tools they need to generate digital fundraising campaigns, sell merchandise, and collect fees. Group leaders and volunteers can set up items independently; however, administrative approval is required before publishing items to the online store. School Shares allows the administration to limit user access based on role and responsibility. For example, a football coach only sees the transaction history for the football team.

"We want all extracurricular leaders and volunteers to have the tools they need to market and raise funds digitally like the pros at a fraction of the cost," says Stacy Dickerson, president of School Shares.

The School Shares platform has a customer relationship management (CRM) that automatically captures and stores supporter information for school programs. The CRM groups contacts by interest, building strategic lists for use in email marketing campaigns.

Built-in marketing tools and social media sharing options allow groups to promote their funding efforts strategically.

School Shares saves bookkeepers valuable time by providing customizable transaction reports that upload directly into their existing school accounting systems. The sales history reports have robust search and filter options making generating audit reports and inquiries easy.

School Shares was founded to connect local businesses to local schools. Businesses can make offers for goods or services for the school to sell in their online store, designating that a portion of each sale benefits a team or group. Businesses benefit from free publicity and growing their customer base; schools benefit by having business offers available in their store or to feature in fundraising campaigns. School Shares safely and securely brings schools, businesses, and communities together.

In the fall of 2022, School Shares partnered with a large high school baseball team for its annual fundraising event. They promoted corporate sponsorship packages, golf tournament registration, and luncheon tickets on their online School Shares team page. During checkout, they collected business sponsorship details, logos, and golf registration details from supporters. This event broke all previous success records by providing a digital checkout option, utilizing built-in email marketing tools and social share features. The baseball team sold 125 percent more luncheon tickets and raised nearly 20 percent more than ever before! At the heart of these successes is School Shares' passionate team that relentlessly works to offer fundraising tools that make a real difference for students and extracurricular clubs across the U.S.

"Our goal is to positively impact young people's lives by encouraging participation in extracurricular activities and sports. At School Shares, we believe no student should have to worry about the cost of extracurricular activities," says Jimmy Ogle, chief operating officer at School Shares.

If you want to reliably manage, digitize, and grow extracurricular program funding with no upfront costs, School Shares can be your ideal partner. Check us out at myschoolshares.com and take advantage of a risk-free way to raise more funds for your school programs.