While the sale of ringtones is primed to raise more cash than CD singles in some countries, a South African loyalty programme is seeking to use this popular medium to raise money for schools.
Mobile technology developer iTouch has joined forces with MySchool, a loyalty programme developed for schools, to offer ringtones, picture messages, logos and screensavers to their learners, while earning them cash at the same time.
With a third of students polled changing their ringtones at least 10 times a year, filtering these funds into their school or university makes sense, says iTouch.
"Fundraising is a major issue at learning institutions which have found subsidy cutbacks a challenge," says Lisa Donnelly, iTouch marketing manager. "The great part is that the ringtones and screensavers are what the learners really want. It`s easy to link fundraising to something they are going to buy anyway, so there is no real effort involved for the school or the university."
For each download requested by a student, a portion of the fee is paid over to the learning organisation. Each school has its own ID code to make sure the money goes where it should.
Donnelly says that within minutes of launching the programme at the University of the Western Cape, over 1 000 minutes of calls to download ringtones had been clocked.
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