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What is Dollar For Schools?

Dollar For Schools is a free App for schools, parents and local businesses to use as a community-based platform.

The Dollar For School's mission, in time, is to become one of the largest sponsors of New Zealand Schools.

This serves our purpose which is to help NZ tamariki receive the best schooling experience possible no matter what ability, challenges or privilege they have. To achieve this, the Dollar for Schools app will provide new ways of funding schools for resources, teacher aides and capital expenses as well as saving schools money by providing free applications for necessary services such as online lunches.

About Us

Creating a business that has real purpose, that benefits everyone involved and would stand the test of time was the motivation that drove the inception of Dollar For Schools.

The idea came to Mark and Renee Steele when serving as members of their kids’ school PTA. Fundraising is a major part of the role of any PTA and it quickly became evident that organising fun runs, calendars and chocolate sales was not only labour intensive, but limiting in their ability to prop up essential school funds.

The problem to solve became – how can we provide schools with services such as lunch ordering for free? Secondly, how do we provide a fundraising system that requires little or no volunteers and is less intrusive on parents busy lives. The ultimate goal here is to save the school money by offering these technology services for free as currently these are charged for by external providers. On top of this provide a new fundraising system that is consistent and sustainable to improve funding for New Zealand schools.

Mark and Renee shared their thinking with long time friend and entrepreneur, Steve Orlandini. (Ironically, Mark and Steve met at the very same school where Mark was on the PTA – 36 years earlier!) He was in and together they created Dollar For Schools – the ultimate school app. A school platform and instant fundraiser all rolled into one.

By creating a community-based platform, Dollar For Schools has real purpose, brings together an ecosystem of schools, parents and local businesses, where everyone benefits.