The Toronto District School Board has approved a $100,000 donation from Future Shop that could put store branding inside schools.
The donation is intended to provide two Toronto schools in low-income neighbourhoods with $50,000 each for new computer labs. Future Shop has requested “some design element that they would like to see common to all labs,” according to TDSB documents. That includes painting the labs red and grey, the chain’s corporate colours.
The potential recipient schools have not been chosen, but Future Shop asked they be located within 7 km of a Future Shop store.
The proximity request is a way of demonstrating Future Shop’s community involvement to employees and customers, said Shafiq Jamal, director of corporate communications.
“We take pride in ensuring we give back to the community and we want our employees and customers to see that,” he said.
Asked about painting the rooms Future Shop colours, Jamal declined to comment.
Kelly Baker, spokesperson for TDSB, said the board does not consider the proposed paint job advertising because “there is no use of logos.” The board has approved the terms of the deal, she said, but it will be up to individual schools to decide whether or not they participate.
Five unnamed schools have been approached to apply for the program; two will be chosen by a local selection committee to receive the technology upgrade.
There has been no word on whether the labs will be named in honour of the corporate donor. Since February, the board has allowed non-classroom “special purpose areas” such as labs and gymnasiums to acknowledge donors with signage.
Board officials declined to comment ahead of receiving the plan’s final report on Thursday, but John Campbell, chairman of the TDSB, was quoted in Tuesday’s edition of The Globe and Mail saying “I personally don’t have a great deal of difficulty with this… The walls have to be painted a colour. If this were Coca-Cola coming forward, but there was no logo and they were asking it be painted red and white, well coincidentally those are the colours of our flag. I don’t personally see where we’re going to be contributing to the over-commercialization of our schools.”
Future Shop built its first red and grey computer lab at Queen Elizabeth Secondary School in Surrey, B.C. with an $85,000 donation in September 2008. The facility was renamed the Future Leaders Tech Lab.
The Burnaby, B.C.-based electronics and home furnishing retailer plans to make five such donations across Canada this year.
