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The DonorsChoose.org club at Horace Mann, the nation’s first student DonorsChoose.org club, had its first bake sale on Friday, April 11, 2008. The students sold a variety of items, ranging from brownies, donuts, cupcakes, candy bars, magic bars to 30 pizza pies! Members of the club either donated baked goods and/or staffed the table. After dedicating a full day to the sale, they helped raise a whopping $800 in proceeds, which the club used to entirely fund a project, Scientific Calculators for My Seventh Grade Algebra Lesson in Chicago, and kick start the funding for Dictionaries for Second Graders. We all had a good time, and an even better time knowing so many deserving students were helped!

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It started with a small idea in our office. Our colleague, Julie, posed the question: “what would happen if we challenged all of the teachers in the Southwest region to tell their network of friends and family that for one day only, DonorsChoose.org will match any donation they make to these teachers’ projects?” Great question, Julie, but… there was one problem – it was April 3^rd and we had to do this before April 11^th or run the risk of having the Operations team put a bounty out on our heads. So, Julie – ALWAYS up for a challenge – put out the word to our teachers! And….. OUR TEACHERS RESPONDED. On April 10^th, over 100 teachers participated in the challenge and they were able to generate over $24,000 in individual contributions (a total of $48,000 including the matching funds). AMAZING!

Needless to say, we were thrilled with the results of this campaign. However, we were even more excited by the response from our teachers. One teacher wrote: “Thank you so much! I see that the campaign did the trick and that my project is fully funded… Thanks so much for your work on behalf of our schools- I smiled all day.”

We hope that these teachers (and all of the teachers who saw how successful this campaign was) got to see – first hand- what some of our most successful teachers do as a matter of course! And, we hope that they continue to engage their networks to help get future proposals funded (teachers are often surprised by how happy people in their network are to help their classroom). Moreover, we hope that the donors who participated in this campaign got to see that they CAN make a huge difference in the classroom of their friend or family member.

This one-day campaign represented a core part of our mission- ordinary teachers and donors coming together to make an extraordinary difference.

Way to go!

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Many of our generous institutional funders have funded half a classroom project’s costs, encouraging donors to make up the other half. We’re pleased to announce the first half-off sale using DonorsChoose.org’s new “match offer” technology. The Pumpkin Foundation / Joe and Carol Reich, known for their efforts to support charter schools throughout New York City, are offering to fund 50% of all projects at the city’s charter schools if someone like you provides the remainder. By completing these projects, you will double the impact of your donation. Click here to see all the projects eligible for the NYC Charter School Match Offer. The sale will continue until the grant is used up.

You can find out more about how Match Offers work over on our FAQ page. (Note, we’re still wrestling with what to call this new philanthropic beast — Double Donations? Red Zone Funding? Half-Off Sale? Eleemosynary Price Reduction Event? — so watch this space for its future name, or better yet leave your suggestions in the comments!) We’re hoping that The Pumpkin Foundation / Joe and Carol Reich grant will lead the way, and more foundations and companies will promote certain kinds of projects and match their grants with your donations.

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On Saturday, April 5, 2008, two dozen Washington, DC teachers stormed the streets of Chinatown with disposable cameras, photocopies, and a mission: to learn the ins-and-outs of how to conduct an interactive walking tour of Washington, DC – without breaking the bank. To these teachers, DonorsChoose.org isn’t just a “great idea” or “something to think about,” but a way to accomplish an out-of-the-box learning experience with their students, which might not otherwise be possible.

The DonorsChoose.org Atlantic Team, in conjunction with the National Geographic Society, informed these teachers about the process of requesting the “interactive” elements of their walking tours: the camcorders, digital cameras, voice recorders, and other supplies that would help them invest students in learning about their communities.

We are so excited to read their proposals and to connect these teachers with willing donors that care about geography instruction in the nation’s capital.

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Ok, maybe it wasn’t exactly the Pony Express, but how many of our students can say that they had their DonorsChoose.org materials delivered via Stagecoach? Well, the students at Lincoln Elementary School in Salt Lake City can –courtesy of Wells Fargo and the George S. & Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation (our leadership partners in Utah).

On March 18^th, DonorsChoose.org held its first media event in Utah to celebrate the fact that DonorsChoose.org is available to every public school teacher in Utah and that individuals in 41 states have come together to donate over $100,000 to almost 10,000 Utah students. The DonorsChoose.org team (including Charles Best, Founder & CEO), Spencer Eccles, Lisa Eccles, several members of the George S. & Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation staff, the Wells Fargo team along with Joanne Milner, SL Mayor’s Educational Liaison and Mike Williams, Director SL School District Education Foundation, were all in attendance.

Media turnout was impressive – the event was picked up on every major television station in Salt Lake City (CBS, NBC & ABC) as well as the local NPR station and a few Spanish language channels (Charles even did an entire interview in Spanish) and we were also covered in several local newspapers, including the Deseret News.

Wells Fargo had one of its beautiful stagecoaches (pictured below) shipped in for this event and let students at Lincoln Elementary (along with a few adults) take a ride. Media captured Charles Best delivering resources to Ms. Paul’s classroom via stage coach. Charles then made a presentation to the classroom and the media outlets present. Ms. Paul and her students demonstrated how they have been using the many resources they have received through DonorsChoose.org and they discussed the impact that DonorsChoose.org has already had on their classroom and school. Finally, the event was capped off with Lisa Eccles and Charles Best handing students boxes of resources purchased via DonorsChoose.org.

The only disappointment was that Charles didn’t have cowboy boots and we couldn’t get him to yell “yee-haw” while riding the stagecoach. Oh well, I guess you can take the boy out of NY…..”

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