Software firm's phone ringing off the hook after €300k school gift

Numerous schools contacted software company Afas after it donated 300,000 euros and new computers to the Hugo Grotius School in Rotterdam. The company's phone rang constantly beginning early on Monday morning with more schools asking for a sponsorship contract, newspaper AD reported.

Schools are calling the firm directly asking for a donation or talk about a possible "partnership" with the company, said Afas director Bas van der Veldt. He expects many more requests are on the way.

However schools should first come up with a substantiated proposal before reaching out to them, Van der Veldt remarked.

The general response from Afas is that it is not going to support more schools. Van der Veldt would instead prefer other companies to donate more to the Hugo Grotius school. "I hope that other schools also start searching for financial partners," he commented.

Afas wants to be kept in the loop about how Hugo Grotius will spend the money over the three-year deal, but it is not planning to try to influence any decisions at the Charlois neighborhood school. "We want to improve ICT education," Van der Veldt commented, "We hope that next year there will be HTML-classes taught by one of our programmers on new computers."