If you are a member of a PTA, or generally looking to raise funds for your school, the EdRover app is simply brilliant. Created by Tania Mulry, a mom of 3 boys, it allows users to direct funds from businesses to the school of their choice each time they “check-in” at a participating location or make an online purchase from one of the 130 participating retailers. It’s free to install and locations and participating businesses are constantly growing. Tania managed to overcome her childhood hardships and went on to graduate from NYU, get a job on Wall Street and build a successful marketing career. When she came up with the EdRover idea, she gave up her job and thus found a way to combine her passions to help school fundarising with her professional skills. School budgets are often tight, and being able to raise funds while people are simply going along with their daily routines simply checking in, seems like a no-brainer. Yet, it took someone with a deep understanding of both the school needs and mobile marketing to build it. Read my exclusive interview with Tania Mulry, founder of EdRover below.
How did you decide to start something like this?
Sure, I spent time thinking about the fundraising dilemma for schools and for parents since I brought my oldest son to daycamp for the first time when he was 6 months old. And he is now 11. So it’s been on my mind for quite a long time. You know, it seemed to me that schools – for profit and non-profit schools were asking parents to do an awful lot of fundraising as my 3 kids got older. By the way, it’s not just schools. It’s scouts, and church and sports organizations. And a lot of parents were feeling that it’s getting to be a little bit much. And to have kids going door to door selling things… It’s not always safe and then the requests for funds from parents are adding up. Nobody can write an endless supply of checks.
And I noticed the trend in the last couple of years that people were using location based apps to check into local businesses saying that they were there, make comments on the food. With Foursquare which really popularized this and made it pretty ubiquitous. People were competing for mayorship for a certain place, so they would check in more frequently. I started to see a lot of my friends doing this. First it was the techies, then the more tech savvy moms, and then suddenly it was people I wasn’t expecting to do it at all – teachers that were a little older than me, and all kinds of unexpected people. So I said, wouldn’t it be cool if we could get businesses to actually do something nice for schools every time we checked in? And that’s how the idea for EdRover was born.
So, how do you find these businesses – the participating retailers? Do you find them or schools or individuals find them?
Well, it’s a mixture. Some we found ourselves. And we’ve got about 40,000 check-ins across the country already in the database. At the moment we are looking to build a group of ambassadors for our program who can really take it to the next step and find out local businesses. Those ambassadors could be working for themselves or they could be working to benefit their school directly. And we are hoping to get a nice group of them, train them in the next couple of months to really take this to the next step.
And is your scope really national or are you focusing on any states in particular?
Our national merchants are that – national, so the 40,000 are pretty evenly spread across the United States including Alaska and Hawaii. So if you are ever in one of those states, feel free to check in. We would love to find reps in different places that go out and find retailers that helps them get on board with the program.
You mentioned this covers any kind of school – elementary, high, even preschool, scout organizations
Yes, any non-profit school can get involved. So this might not work for my son’s daycare which is making a profit off of me, but it would definitely work for public school, private school (most private schools), and charter schools, elementary to high school level. And let’s not forget some of my associations and after school programs like Boys & Girls clubs, YMCA. They are eligible to be added to the program as well. We gladly accept their applications and add them if they ask to, which is happening quite a bit these days.
That’s great! When did you start this company?
We launched the first app last March, March 2011.
How did you come up with the name? Do you have a dog named Rover?
No [laughing], in fact when I first came up with the name, I did not have a dog at all but my kids really wanted the dog. I knew what the concept was going to be so I was looking for something that helped describe it and it’s very hard to find a web address that has something to do with school or education. That is a really crowded space. I was getting really frustrated after a hundred different combinations I’ve tried. Then I stepped back from my computer for a second and I thought “OK, well, what kinds of things do we do in school that we really thought were fun”. I was thinking back to gym class or recess and the game Red Rover came to mind. And all of a sudden I thought, “oh, well, it’s got ed in it!” That’s perfect, cool. And then I loved that rover also means that you’re moving from place to place. So it actually ended being pretty descriptive of the service as well and it was available.
So did you leave a job to start this new business or did you do it parallel to something else?
You know, I did leave a job to start this. I know it sounds a little crazy to many people in this economy. I was an executive for a marketing agency. I was just ready to start something new. It was not so much that I disliked my job or what I was doing. I was actually working with some great clients – retailers like JCPenney’s, Gamestop and Nintendo, Frito Lay, Huggies. I was just working on some really cool programs. I have this entrepreneurial bug. And I decided I’d figure out a way to do it. I wanted to move forward with it and really dedicate my time to it. So yeah, jumped in with both feet.
With all this marketing background, how much of your effort with EdRover is in marketing and what are your favorite marketing tools?
Now, the first part of the question. I spent a lot of time on product development and that was really all consuming but then we did have to switch gears and go into marketing mode. There are so many great tools out there for free to really low cost to help with marketing these days. This really depends on what your product is. For an app there are some great services that you can pay per install of an app. My favorite would be Flurry.com. We love working with bloggers on contests. That is really effective to get sign-ups and also social media and engagement. And the tool that we use for that is called Rafflecopter. It’s a free tool that lets you set up a contest and you can share the same little contest module on multiple blogs. And then say, the person gets entry every time they follow one of the participating blogs or take other actions. For example, for us to get extra points if they download the app, extra points if they make a blog post on our site. So it’s great. It automatically picks the winner using Random.org. It’s been terrific. It’s been a really big hit with our audience.
I noticed that Classwish.org is the website that is funneling the money to schools. Is that correct?
We have been working with Classwish and that’s just about to change right now actually. We are switching our model so that we are paying the organizations directly. We got a lot of feedback in the first year that we are working with schools that they would prefer a little more flexibility to how they use their money. They don’t just want classroom supplies. Many are looking to fund fun field trips, science labs, technology and that is not necessarily a fit with the Classwish model. We are still very friendly with them. We think their model is cool, it’s just it made it a little more complicated for our users.
Would that still be part of the reward system?
It could be. It could still be beneficiary if somebody wanted to fund class wish lists. They could take Classwish rather than their school and they could allocate the funds through Classwish to the classroom of their choice. But at the moment we are just switching everything around on the one side. You probably found that information right before we were moving it around.
Does your family help with EdRover? Do your kids get involved?
Oh, my kids love drawing pictures of Ed. It’s so funny. When we were first talking about it, I asked them “well, what do you think this little dog should look like? Can we draw a picture?” And we all drew almost the same dog – brown dog with brown spots. Same sort of shape. I have to take those pictures and post them one day. They are so cute. It’s like he existed before we put him down on paper.
And then my two younger sons always want me to get the sales materials out when we go out to a restaurant because they want to talk to the manager. It gets them involved. It’s like basic work meeting. They think it’s a cool idea. We need these skills, kids need these skills.
Do you work at home or do you have a separate place? I am wondering how you balance work and home.
One of the coolest things about being an entrepreneur in this day and age is that you can do so much from your home office. We may be almost growing out of our home office but I can work here, I can work at other offices. Sometimes during the busy season we find a small office so the team can be together more often. But for the moment we are home based. It’s just really nice to be able to be with the kids in the afternoon. Even though we have guidelines – can you bother mommy or not – and I have to make breaks to make sure to get them their snacks and make sure their homework is getting started. So that’s the nice part. That’s the part I value most about being an entrepreneur. It wouldn’t be this way with the corporate job.
What advice would you give to moms that are starting a new business and wanting to work from home?
It is very important I think to carve out some space that is just your business space that does not encroached by all of the things around you. That is going to be distracting. There is always going to be another load of laundry to do, there are always dishes to do, there’s always a thousand chores. If you really want to be focused on your business, you need a little time and place that is always free for business. That really helps. If it has the door, that is even better. Not everybody can do that from the space perspective. It’s nice to be able to close that door behind you and put work behind you as well.
Do you have any favorite business tools other than the ones you mentioned earlier?
One of the tools that our team uses quite a bit is called DropBox. It lets us share files between computers and with each other. You know, if we have a design project going on, we can share files with the designer and they can send them right back. it’s kind of like having all the files dropped into a cloud. It’s great. It’s also free. There are some others that are similar, like Box.net. Those are very handy.
Tania, you mentioned some new functionality, like paying the schools directly. Is there any other new functionality you are planning?
We are just in the middle of designing a new version that will replace the current iPhone version that will also give us the Android, Blackberry and mobile browser capabilities. And the team is under top secret clearance right now designing the next version. I don’t even have all the details that I could share. We are hoping it will be much more streamlined and easy to use. It will have more features like build a team and support your organization.
When is that coming?
We are hoping in the next few months. May be ready for summer vacation.
What did you learn from your mother that you would like to pass to your kids?
My mother is super resourceful and crafty. She is always creating new projects. Whenever I start a new project and see how excited my boys are to use their imaginations and their hands to make something new, I know it is my mom’s legacy at work.
One last question, if I asked your kids, what kind of a mom you are, what would they say?
Oh, Gosh, that’s a really good question. I would love to ask them at dinner time tonight. They made me a beautiful poster for Mother’s day that said all kinds of nice things about me. I wonder if the babysitter prompted some of them. But I do think they think I’m fun and focused. I don’t think they would say I am too lenient on them. I am kind of a stickler for rules. They are very affectionate and I think that’s because I am an affectionate mom, which is good. That’s a very important question and one I hope my kids give a good answer for.
You know, it is true everything we do is for them. I got into this definitely because I wanted to spend more time with them. Sometimes, as I was saying about the balance issue – being able to set things aside and turn off one or the other – the business or the personal – to focus on what’s important to focus on. I can work too much and then they come in and remind me. But it’s good that they do and they know they can.
