WePay, Grantoo’s first official partner, is pledging education grant money for college students who play in next week’s online social trivia tournament
SAN FRANCISCO – April 5, 2012 – Grantoo, a social gaming platform that brings college students and companies together in a socially responsible world of gaming, is hosting its first public tournament on April 8 in partnership with WePay, the easiest way to collect payments online. The tournament will be open to students at 40 colleges nationwide, including Yale, Duke, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and USC. Students will play against each other in Grantoo’s version of trivia in order to win educational grants towards tuition, books, and other educational needs. To sign up for Grantoo’s first public tournament, visit http://signup.grantoo.org.
By partnering with Grantoo, sponsoring brands like WePay not only showcase charitable giving, but are also integrated into the gameplay to engage college students while they compete. In the first ever Grantoo public tournament, WePay is donating $5,000 that will be divided into grants and awarded to 12 student winners who will use the winnings to help pay for their education at a time when tuition costs are rising. Grantoo also requires that students pledge a minimum of 10 percent of their winnings to a charity of their choice in order to build social awareness and encourage a lifetime of giving. Charities participating include Pencils of Promise, GlobeMed, The Hunger Project, Millennium Campus Network, Partners in Health, MAMA Hope, and Engineers without Borders.
The first official tournament will be held on Sunday, April 8, at 9 pm EDT with a grand prize of $2,000. Tournaments will follow each day thereafter from Monday, April 9 through Saturday, April 13 with $500 prizes up for grabs each day, all sponsored by WePay. Grantoo recently hosted a successful beta tournament, sponsored by Kred, for a select group of students on March 25. The winner, Kody Ross, won $2,000 toward his education at University of Vermont and donated $200 of his prize to charity.
“Today 60% of college students drop out of school due to rising tuition costs,” said Grantoo Co-Founder Dimitri Sillam. “We are looking to partner with brands that are charitable and want to give students a helping hand because there is real problem of students needing help paying for their education.”
“At WePay we help college students collect money online every day, and we understand how rough those years can be financially,” said WePay CEO Bill Clerico. “Grantoo is making it super fun to get a scholarship that helps pay the bills and donate to a good cause, and we’re thrilled to be their launch partner.”
Assets
Link to press kit
Link to promo video
About Grantoo
Grantoo is a free social gaming platform where college students play casual games to win tuition grants and donate to charity. Grantoo partners with national brands that sponsor gaming tournaments to help college students and the causes they care about. The platform helps businesses connect with the college student demographic and better showcase their corporate giving. Grantoo will open its platform and hold its first nationwide tournament in April 2012. Grantoo was founded in September 2011 and is based in San Francisco, CA. Students can “play” their tuition bills and learn more information at www.grantoo.org
About WePay
WePay makes it easy to accept payments online. Start accepting payments in under a minute: no merchant account, programming, or website required. WePay is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. For more information visit https://www.wepay.com or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
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Pam Radgowski, WePay
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Renee Sogueco 
Vanessa Alves-Johnson