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By Candice
Tuesday,
Mar 31, 2009 at 5:43pm
Ms. Haney teaches 2nd graders in Washington state who are new to the United States, and, in many cases, never had any experience in their native countries in a classroom or school at all. Her classroom currently includes students from six different countries speaking five different languages. In order to help bridge the gap for these young learners, Ms. Haney submitted a project on DonorsChoose.org for multicultural books, math books and character-building books. These books will help her students relate to the characters in the stories and learn the building blocks for reading.
Seattle’s Maria Arcega-Dunn recently featured Ms. Haney’s classroom on Q13 Fox News to spread the word about these much-needed books. You can check out the news story here. Ms. Haney’s classroom still needs help – if you want to support these students, click here!
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By Katie
Tuesday,
at 4:56pm
On our trip to Maryland last week, we swung by to visit one of our awesome vendors, AKJ Books. We had a great time meeting Tim Thompson and his team, and we really enjoyed hearing their stories about some of the amazing classroom projects they have shipped books to!
Our favorite part was Tim’s tour of their HUGE warehouse, where we took a trip down memory lane seeing book titles from Amelia Bedelia to books we read in high school. Alex and Tim had fun jumping on the cherry picker, to show the full scale of the number of books that AKJ Books carries.
You can click here to see a sample of our teachers who are requesting books for their classroom through AKJ Books.
Off to read!
Katie & Alex
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By Alex
Tuesday,
at 4:52pm
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is asking the Charlotte community to play an active role in giving $135,000 in funding to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) this spring through DonorsChoose.org. Knight Foundation, DonorsChoose.org and CMS announced the grant and launched the distribution of Giving Cards this morning at Allenbrook Elementary School.
View Event Pictures
View Video
The Knight Foundation will work with DonorsChoose.org and distribute thousands of $100 DonorsChoose.org giving cards to various Charlotte-based education, community and civic groups. Giving card recipients will be asked to apply their $100 gift from the Knight Foundation to a CMS classroom request of their choice at www.DonorsChoose.org. There are currently more than 400 project-funding requests posted on the website by CMS teachers.
“DonorsChoose.org provides an excellent vehicle to link individuals to public education and especially to the creative work of our teachers and students,” said Susan Patterson, Knight Foundation program director in Charlotte.
Katie Bisbee, DonorsChoose.org vice president noted, the grant is a great incentive to get the community more involved in education.
“This generous grant from the Knight Foundation is uniquely exciting to DonorsChoose.org because it’s creating an opportunity for us to engage Charlotte community members in local classrooms,” said Bisbee. “Thanks to the Knight Foundation, giving card recipients can go online and learn about needs in local classrooms and help meet the need of their choosing.”
Through Donorschoose.org, more than $403,000 has gone to CMS classrooms since its North Carolina launch in 2005. Approximately $166,000 of that has been given to CMS already this school year.
“CMS thanks both The Knight Foundation and DonorsChoose.org for their commitment to improving the community by supporting CMS teachers and students,” said Joel Ritchie, CMS area superintendent for the Central Learning Community. “We appreciate this generous financial gift and the community’s support, as both will continue to make an immediate and direct impact on learning and instruction within CMS classrooms.”
The Knight Foundation grant was secured by the efforts of Mustaches for Kids (M4K) Charlotte, a group of local men who grew mustaches for four weeks this winter to raise money for DonorsChoose.org requests. M4K Charlotte beat out chapters in other Knight Foundation communities to mobilize the most participants and raise the most money for local schools, earning $135,000 in additional funding to invest in Charlotte classrooms.
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By Kirk
Tuesday,
at 11:19am
This March, St. Louis Bread Company (known as Panera Bread throughout most of the country) honored its guests and local St. Louis volunteers with the “gift of giving.” In partnership with the company’s Share the Warmth program, which helps local food pantries and non-profit organizations feed the hungry, 100 event attendees all received a DonorsChoose.org GivingCard to make difference in St. Louis area schools.
Those receiving the cards were excited for the opportunity to donate to local classrooms, and for many, it was the first time they had heard about DonorsChoose.org. St. Louis Bread was also thrilled to be able to inspire others to give back to students in need in the community.
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By Kris
Wednesday,
Mar 25, 2009 at 4:47pm
It was a star-studded night in San Francisco last week, but there was some disagreement as to who the real stars were!
To the donors and teachers who gathered at our reception on Thursday night, the star was clearly our founder and CEO, Charles Best. Several of our most loyal donors came to our offices to meet the man who initially conceived and continues to direct our amazing organization. On a stop during a whirlwind West Coast trip, Charles was the official excuse for our party on Thursday night. Throughout the evening, he spoke eloquently about his experience teaching social studies in the Bronx and his belief that there “had to be a better way” to help teachers get the resources they needed to be really innovative and effective. We all loved hearing his sometimes-hilarious stories about the early days of DonorsChoose.org (less than a decade ago!).
But to Charles and to us, the stars were our guests—the teachers and donors who bring our website to life through their requests and their gifts. The teachers who post their project requests provide daily evidence that creative and committed teachers are working undaunted in schools across the country—striving to provide their students with the best possible learning experiences in spite of overwhelming challenges.
And without our other stars–our donors, we would have little more than a really cool website that showcases some amazing teachers. It is our donors who have enabled us to change the learning experience for over 1.8 million students. We were all awed to actually meet some of these online super-stars! And, though there weren’t any official paparazzi, we do have a photo to share with you!
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By Candice
Monday,
Mar 23, 2009 at 5:25pm
Not only do the teachers using DonorsChoose.org go above and beyond for their students, but our donors are also pretty amazing! One of our Seattle donors had so much fun contributing to several classroom projects across the country that she wanted teachers and students to experience the gift of giving too. So, this donor is providing DonorsChoose.org GivingCards to every teacher that she funded so that those teachers can “pay it forward” and support other classrooms on DonorsChoose.org!
As you can imagine, the teachers are thrilled to have the opportunity to help another classroom that needs resources. These GivingCard recipients have selected classrooms that are complete strangers to them, often in different states. After Mrs. Coppotelli in Connecticut told her kindergartners about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the students decided to help out a classroom in New Orleans. This teacher and her students jumped at the chance to provide materials to another classroom – “this is probably the coolest thing I’ve been involved in … The kids are so excited, you have no idea!!” Mrs. Coppotelli’s classroom has been stocked with supplies through DonorsChoose.org and she does not know what she would have done “without my DonorsChoose.org family.”
Other teachers funded by our Seattle donor are also getting in on the fun and finding great projects to support. Thanks so much to our incredible donor for this great program that is inspiring teachers and students to help each other out!
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By Arianne
Monday,
at 2:38pm
Since our launch there in 2007, Utah has been a great success story with lots of active teachers, a great partnership with Wells Fargo Utah and George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, and citizen philanthropists who stepped up to support local teachers from day one!
Now we have even more exciting news in the Beehive State! Thanks to the generosity of Wells Fargo Utah and The Eccles Foundation, all projects submitted by teachers at high-need and/or rural Utah schools can be brought to life for half the cost! This grant offers a dollar-for-dollar match that allows individual donors to double their impact when they choose to support these projects.
Projects include “The Flip Side of Learning” and “Superstars of Science“. Please click here to see all the great projects eligible for support thanks to Wells Fargo Utah and The Eccles Foundation.
Our thanks go out to these two great organizations. We are grateful for their generous support of Utah students and for being such wonderful partners!
Utah teachers: Post your classroom projects to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity! For full details, visit the Announcements section of the Teacher Home Page- www.DonorsChoose.org/Teacher.
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By Julie
Monday,
at 12:44pm
We love companies that “do good” while “doing well,” and we love voting, so it’s great to see all those things coming together at ePhoneNumbers. According to their website, “…we at ePhoneNumbers pledge to donate 10% of our profits to help the people in need of our communities.” We’re thrilled that DonorsChoose.org is one of the charities they are considering for a charitable contribution!
Take a minute and vote for us here, and we’ll help ePhoneNumbers get much needed resources into classrooms that need it most:
http://ephonenumbers.net/company/giving-back.html
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By Candice
Friday,
Mar 20, 2009 at 7:36pm
Lyanne Melendez of ABC7 in San Francisco sat down with DonorsChoose.org founder Charles Best this week to hear about how this all got started. Along with alot of hard work and the help of some Silicon Valley leaders, it was reported that bribes of homemade dessert were involved!
ABC also visited a Sausalito classroom to check out a DonorsChoose.org user in action. Mrs. Morris is teaching her students music, but currently has no instruments to teach with. Thanks to the project that she posted on DonorsChoose.org - 4th Grade Harmony: Melodious Music with Ravishing Recorders - her classroom will soon have recorders to play. After the classroom was featured on ABC, generous music-loving donors completely funded the music project in one day!
Thank you to the donors who made this idea a reality for these Sausalito students (and of course, thank you to someone’s mom for making dessert back in 2000). You can check out the full story here.
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By Julie
Friday,
at 7:34pm
It was a big day in Los Angeles today. Not only was it a beautiful first day of spring but it was the Pillar’s annual event, “Principal for a Day.” DonorsChoose.org was happy to be a part of it all. Not only did we get to participate and experience being a principal – it’s harder than it looks! – but we also got to treat all the executives that participated with DonorsChoose.org GivingCards.
Principal for a Day pairs local business executives with a school and a principal for – you guessed it – a day. Participants shadow a principal and get to see what it’s like to run a school. In my case I got to see the inner workings of Rosewood Avenue Elementary School thanks to my lovely host, Ms. Chapman.
Later, participating executives got a DonorsChoose.org GivingCard so that they can continue supporting local schools by helping teachers get supplies for their classrooms. A special shout out to Merrill Lynch for hosting the event as well as to the W.M. Keck Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the LA Business Journal, and Univision. Our hats go off to the lovely folks at the LA Area Chamber of Commerce for putting on such an awesome event year after year.
For more information about Pillar – a joint office of the LA Area Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Unified School district visit: http://www.pillarla.com/pillar.html
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