Community loyalty programme sustains donations during the pandemic

MySchool was established in 1997 by a Johannesburg-based parent who wanted to help his child’s school raise more funds in an easy and sustainable manner. Since then, MySchool has gone from strength to strength and is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. To date, the programme has raised R890m for worthy causes.

While the community loyalty programme has many retail partners nationwide, its main partner is Woolworths South Africa. The give back platform initially focused solely on providing supporters with the opportunity to give back funds to their local schools every time they shopped at participating retailers but expanded in 2007 to assist “Village” and “Planet” causes due to the vast and growing need in South Africa.

Pieter Twine, general manager of MySchool, said “despite the unprecedented socio-economic challenges the world has faced over the past two years, it has really been encouraging to see that South Africans have continued to give back and support those in need”.

“We currently raise over R7m a month for good causes and are very fortunate to have well over a million regular supporters who swipe their MySchool cards with their purchases, thereby supporting over 8,000 schools, charities as well as animal and environmental organisations across the country,” Twine added.

Growth prospects for 2022

The programme’s goals for 2022 include growing the number of active users, increasing support for partners and the funds given back to beneficiaries. MySchool also aims to complete several major corporate social responsibility initiatives over the year.

“MySchool has recorded good, sustained growth, even during tough economic times which reflects South Africans’ unyielding commitment to building a country we can all be proud of.

“Our success also illustrates the great faith that the public has placed in us, to ensure transparency and to distribute funds raised for charities and schools that they have personally chosen to support. We are excited as to what this year has in store for us as we celebrate 25 years of giving,” Twine concludes.