Online games platform offers educational grants to winners

Featuring games such as poker and quizzes, brands can sponsor tournaments on Grantoo by providing funds that will go towards educational grants, or donations to charities, for students who win.

We have already seen educational institutions engaging potential students through reward-giving and social media – take the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business for instance, which recently offered a full scholarship for the best 140-character application sent through Twitter. Now a new site – Grantoo – is providing students with the chance to win educational grants by playing online games. Accepting that online gaming is one of the most popular forms of procrastination among those in college, the platform aims to turn timewasting pursuits into more worthwhile opportunities for profit. Featuring games such as poker and quizzes, brands can sponsor tournaments by providing funds that will go towards educational grants, or donations to charities, for students who win. The idea is to give young people a better reason for playing, while enabling businesses to show off their benevolence and gain favor with the youth demographic. Grantoo says that a Cone study has shown 83 percent of Americans want brands to support a cause, and the new gaming platform hopes to offer a way for them to do this. The site will be going into beta testing from 25 March with its first tournament launching fully soon after that. Brands: one to partner with to increase your exposure and boost public perception?