Campus money-making idea

[LetsHugItOut]

Hey all,

A friend of mine told me about a small business run by students at his college that struck me as an easily-replicable business model.

The idea: The company makes agreements with local vendors that all card-holding students receive special discounts at the vendors. The company then sells membership cards to students for $10 each, almost entirely profit.

I know that my town's public high school did this once as a fundraiser -- I'm not sure how common it is.

I'm living at my school this summer, so I'm thinking about trying to get this set up before classes start in the fall. Incidentally, I feel my campus is ideally structured for a venture like this, as there is a large, concentrated group of vendors that receive 80%+ of my schoolmates' business.
My goal in posting this here is to receive feedback, hear suggestions about things I may not have thought of, etc.

Some specific concerns:

- The legality of such a venture. I think I should be able to get around this by having the profits of the business go to my fraternity. I don't have a particular desire to make money off of this; I'm more interested in running a small, profitable outfit. Plenty of the fraternities on my campus engage in money-making businesses, so I should be able to figure out pretty easily how to get permission for this.

- Convincing local vendors to offer worthwhile deals to cardholders. This is obviously the heart of the product, and is my biggest concern right now. How do you think is the best way to do this? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any feedback or suggestions!

[emon87]

I thought they did this like everywhere? I know they did it at my HS and do it at northwestern.


Umm other than that, negotiations with companies will take FOREVER. I've cold called local businesses for fund raising for a huge, well known campus philanthropy and it takes a ton of time. Convincing them to do something so you can make money I imagine would take even longer.

Also, if 80% of the campus already shops at these places, what's in it for them? They already have the customer base.

[LetsHugItOut]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought they did this like everywhere? I know they did it at my HS and do it at northwestern.


Umm other than that, negotiations with companies will take FOREVER. I've cold called local businesses for fund raising for a huge, well known campus philanthropy and it takes a ton of time. Convincing them to do something so you can make money I imagine would take even longer.

Also, if 80% of the campus already shops at these places, what's in it for them? They already have the customer base.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you. Good points.

After doing a little research, it does seem like a fairly popular fundraising method. Still, nobody does it at my college.

[emon87]

if you can figure out and explain clearly and quickly what's in it for them will go a long way to getting businesses to sign up.

Also, target small businesses. If you go after chains you'll most likely not be able to get a hold of anyone who has the authority to give discounts (franchises excluded)