Why (and how) we're giving away free apps

It's a question we've answered a lot. So I think it's probably time to (finally) get the words down on paper.

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How it works:

Our App Grant Program was created to help selected schools receive a custom mobile app - 100% free of charge. Sometimes, we are able find a few local sponsors to help offset some of our incurred costs - but this is not a requirement to receive the app at no cost. Some schools have sponsors, some schools do not. When we're able to find sponsors, it helps us to extend more grants to more schools.

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Free forever?

The answer is yes. In fact, we’ve found that the more valuable the app is to the school the more likely we’re able to retain sponsors or find new ones in subsequent years. We want to serve schools: plain and simple. We have an excellent product. We don’t want budgetary restrictions, especially in the times we’re in today, to keep anyone from benefiting from the work we do. Free now. Free year 2. Free year 3. Free year 23.  

Other options?

This model has gone so well for some of our schools that they wanted to leverage this as a fundraising opportunity.  Does that work for us? Absolutely. There’s nothing we’d want more than for schools to benefit doubly. We’ll even provide you with the resources on how to approach partners and to describe how your app is going to enhance your community’s communication. 

‍A free app is great, but an app that helps increase fundraising is even better.

Or, if your community wants to just pay for the app outright (with no sponsor) we get that too! Keep it simple.

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Who are the sponsors?

We will actually begin our sponsorship placement process with your preferred list of sponsors. However, you also have complete approval/veto power over any sponsor (local or national). They will not display in your app without your prior approval.

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Why we've chosen this model:

We’ve been working with colleges since 2013, and only began working with K-12 schools in 2017. There were really three things led us to working with K-12 schools:

1. We fundamentally believe that the family unit is the building block of our society.
2. It is our belief that there's no better place to serve these families than in the schools of their community.
3. Our product turned out to be a remarkably good fit for K-12 schools (and very much needed).

But, as we began working with more and more K-12 schools we found that 4 out of 5 times if we were unable to work with a school, it was due to budgetary reasons.

So, we made a decision: if a school were to decline to work with Legit Apps, we wanted it to be for product fit reasons, never for price reasons.

Our business model is pretty straightforward: We want to be generous and truly serve schools, and we hope that others will join us. And so far, we've found that this works quite well.