i3 Verticals Education and HundredX® Work to Help Schools Feed Children During Pandemic

PaySchools®, one of the flagship education businesses within the education vertical of i3 Verticals (Nasdaq: IIIV), today announced an initiative with HundredX Inc. to help schools feed children during the coronavirus pandemic.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the School Nutrition Association estimated that 75 percent of America’s K-12 school districts had unpaid meal debt and were struggling to assist students who might otherwise be unable to afford meals. In fact, a child’s school lunch is sometimes the only nutritional meal the child receives each day. Now, with families facing even greater financial challenges and children being forced to home school, the problem is growing even more serious.

In fall 2019, PaySchools launched an initiative called Trays Across America™ to help schools struggling with lunch debt. As part of this program, and to support districts in their efforts to continue feeding students while schools are closed due to COVID‑19, PaySchools joined with consumer insights innovator HundredX and its Express Feedback for Good program to allocate up to $1 million of funding to help participating districts eliminate lunch debt and budget shortfalls. Funds are provided by HundredX via relationships with individual districts that engage in virtual campaigns to collect valuable consumer feedback by surveying parent communities and other supporters. The remote campaigns are a particularly relevant funding tool for schools during the pandemic, when so many other methods have come to a halt.

This initiative could provide America’s schools with hundreds of thousands of student meals this year. This is especially important now when districts across the country are providing free breakfasts and lunches to students to ensure they don’t go hungry. In many communities, these grab-and-go meals are available to all families – not just those prequalified for free‑and‑reduced-cost meals through the USDA’s National School Lunch Program.

“The coronavirus crisis threatens the financial health of already budget-stressed school districts,” said Hume Miller at PaySchools. “As a K-12 nutrition services partner, we care about what our customers care about: feeding children as well as district solvency. That’s why we created Trays Across America and why we have now joined forces with HundredX to provide additional help to children in need and the school systems that are taking care of them.”

Over a 30-day period, the Express Feedback for Good program uses an innovative, mobile-friendly process to encourage supporters to simply share feedback on the companies and brands that they know well from a menu of over 1,200 options. Each piece of feedback takes about 60 seconds to provide and creates up to $2 of support for the district – something that adds up quickly. For participating supporters, there is nothing to buy, no advertising, and personal information is kept confidential by HundredX.

“This represents a true win-win for everyone,” said Steve Cook, VP of Strategy & Partnerships at HundredX. “It has never been more critical for companies and brands to be able to listen to their customers. At the same time, non-profit organizations are in desperate need of creative funding solutions. Joining with i3 Verticals’ Education division in this unique way will help ensure students across America have access to meals during this challenging time.”

Select districts across the nation are eligible to participate in this joint initiative in 2020. Interested districts can apply to be considered for this program at: https://expressfeedback.net/enterprise/businesses/efg-program-interest/exzrn80.

About HundredX:

HundredX, Inc. is a data and analytics company that creates actionable insights on over 1,200 leading companies and brands. HundredX enables business leaders and investors to make better decisions by hearing from more representative customers. Express Feedback for Good is a turn-key program created by HundredX that allows non-profit organizations to generate significant funding by asking their supporters to simply provide their opinions. Unlike traditional surveys, participants determine what feedback they provide. HundredX is a do well and do good company whose primary cost of goods sold supports non-profits. Visit www.hundredxinc.com.

For interested businesses who want to help support this unique opportunity, call Steven Cook at (469) 638-6930.

About PaySchools

PaySchools is one of the leading businesses within the education vertical of i3 Verticals. Specializing in integrated payment technology with a strong focus on nutrition services and family payments, their software powers commerce for education and currently serves thousands of schools across the US.

For more information on the Trays Across America program offered by PaySchools, call Diana Day-Cartee, Head of Marketing, at (615) 430-2730 or ddaycartee@i3verticals.com.

About i3 Verticals

Helping drive the convergence of software and payments, i3 Verticals delivers seamlessly integrated payment and software solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses and other organizations in strategic vertical markets, such as education, non-profit, the public sector, property management, and healthcare and to the business-to-business payments market. With a broad suite of payment and software solutions that address the specific needs of its clients in each strategic vertical market, i3 Verticals processed approximately $14.0 billion in total payment volume for the year ended December 31, 2019.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200409005139/en/