Software as school fund-raiser? Green developer tries it out

Right now, there are pretty much three categories of software cropping up to support the green business movement: utilities for monitoring and managing power consumption of individual PCs, servers and data center equipment; larger enterprise applications that seek to capture all the different environmental metrics that businesses are now being offered to manage, and printer management software that helps cut down on paper waste.

This post concerns the latter, which is picking up more interest in municipalities and businesses because of the very real cost saving benefits that it provides in addition to the requisite green feel-goods. I’ve written about several of the different printing management options over in my GreenTech Pastures blog, most recently an offering from GreenPrint, which has found its way into usage within Portland and some other cities.

The reason I’m mentioning the software here is because of a unique fund-raising program that the company is piloting with some schools in Portland. Yes, fund-raising. Pretty cool idea, huh?

Convinced that children are some of the best evangelists for encouraging green behavior, these schools have set up fund-raising tabs where parents, alumni or other school supporters can buy the GreenPrint software, with a cut going to the school’s fund-raiser.

You doubtless have been conned into buying gift-wrap or nuts or something else you didn’t need, why not buy something that could save you money. In fact, if your school or non-profit organization is looking for a fund-raising idea, GreenPrint might be a rather unorthodox new option for you. So, the company winds up with two business propositions for a school: technology that could help save school districts money AND, if it meets the approval of the community, a potential new way to raise funds.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com