My School fund – Leading a High-Stakes Project on a Tight Budget and Timeline

Some projects start with a well-laid-out plan. Others? Well, they land on your desk when things don’t go as planned. That’s exactly what happened with My School Fund—an exciting initiative designed to help schools and nurseries earn cashback through everyday spending.

Initially, the plan was to hire contractors to build the project due to the internal development team’s other commitments. But finding the right contractor at the right time is difficult. By the time it became clear that external help wouldn’t work, we had already lost valuable development time. That’s when the project was handed over to our internal team—with even less time and an even tighter budget.

Now, here’s the thing about me: I don’t like saying no to a challenge. Some might say it’s a weakness, but I call it drive. But I had the luxury(I would say hard work to nurture them) of saying yes as I had a team that I had been leading for some time, whom I could trust, and they delivered some projects with challenging time frames. When you trust your team, know each other’s strengths, and push in the same direction, you can make magic happen.

What is My School Fund?

In simple terms, My School Fund(https://www.myschoolfund.org/) connects schools, nurseries, and parents in a win-win cashback scheme.

👉 Parents sign up and link their credit card.
👉 When they shop at Argos or Sainsbury’s, they earn cashback—2% for themselves and 1% for their child’s school or nursery.
👉 Schools use that cashback to boost their budgets.
👉 Parents redeem their cashback as e-gift cards.

Sounds simple, right? Not quite.

Behind the Scenes: A Complex Process

Making this work required seamless coordination between multiple parties:

ESPO (our client) visits schools to explain the program.

Schools promote the initiative to parents.

Parents sign up with the program and link their credit cards. The web portal was developed by us https://www.myschoolfund.org/

Transactions happen at participating retailers (Argos, Sainsbury’s).

A third-party provider (Fidel) collects the transaction data, and we collect these data through API.

Receive data sent to Sainsbury’s for verification through an automated file transferring process.

Sainsbury’s filters out ineligible purchases (e.g., alcohol, cigarettes), and we collect the filtered data through another file-transferring process.

Verified cashback is allocated to parents and schools through an automated process.

Parents and schools can redeem their cashback for e-gift cards.

We issue and supply the e-gift cards by connecting to retailer APIs .

A lot of data movement, API calls, file transfers, and verification processes were involved—meaning a lot could go wrong if not handled carefully.

Making It Work Against the Odds

With time already lost, we had to be smart, efficient, and focused. There was no room for delays, no budget for mistakes. So, how did we pull it off? With the clock ticking and the budget stretched thin, my team and I rolled up our sleeves and got to work.

✔ Clear ownership: Having worked together for years, we knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. This allowed us to allocate tasks efficiently and trust one another to deliver. Each team member knew exactly what they had to deliver.

✔ Quick decision-making: No red tape, no endless meetings—just solutions. We focused on simplifying workflows and automating repetitive tasks to save time and reduce errors.

✔ Collaborating with Stakeholders: Constant communication with ESPO, retailers, and third-party providers ensured that everyone was aligned and working toward the same goal

✔ Trusting the team: Knowing who excels at what to move fast.

✔ Iterative delivery: We built in stages, solving issues as they came. When issues arose—and they did—we addressed them head-on, finding creative solutions to keep the project on track.

✔ Laser focus on the goal: Most importantly, we weren’t aiming for “perfect”—we were aiming for done, functional, and secure.

Despite the hurdles, we made it work. We kept refining, fixing, and improving the process until everything ran smoothly. The tight timeline and limited budget made it tough, but that’s what makes success taste even sweeter.