Barclays Capital employees recently teamed up with DonorsChoose.org, volunteering their time to process teacher thank you packages at our NYC headquarters for a memorable afternoon! The team helped put together and screen feedback packages. They got so into it that by the end they were reading student letters to each other and sharing especially cute or funny thank you notes.The group had so much fun that they volunteered not just once, but twice.
THANK YOU Barclays Capital for your time and energy!
If your company is interested in volunteering in our NYC office, contact Associate Director, Yaritza Olmeda, at yaritza (at) DonorsChoose (dot) org.
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During the month of October, hundreds of bloggers, teachers, and twitterers devoted their time (and various methods of persuasion) to help inspire over $637,336 in donations to classroom projects via the DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge Social Media Challenge, reaching over 116,437 public school students in need of essential learning materials. 4,545 of their readers, fans, friends, and followers helped galvanize the challenge by supporting public schools across the country in such a significantway. We’ve shattered all previous year’s Blogger Challenges thanks to the hardwork of every participant, teacher and citizen philanthropist, along with a $250,000 match offer from HP (read more, here).
Winners: By raising $314,208, mobilizing 1,121 readers and reaching 51,905 students, Sarah Bunting and the Tomato Nation community were the overall winners of this competition. They even toppled the all-time record raised by one Giving Page set in last year’s challenge when they raised over $111,000. This is truly a testament to how deeply they care about public schools and how effective Sarah has been at inspiring the entire Tomato Nation community. We urge you to take a look at the blog posts, comments and video from the past month to see how they were able to mobilize so effectively. Her “Bet Red” Giving Page, an extension of her casino-royale “Bunting’s 13″ theme, also had the most donors; 25% to be exact. Kudos to TomatoNation.com. We look forward to seeing the Tomato costume make its way to Atlantic City where it will undoubtedly bet red!
The other big winner of the Social Media Challenge were our Teachers, who threw their hat into the ring under the “We Teach. Those Who Don’t, GIVE!” Leaderboard. Teachers from all over the country banded together, under this awesome slogan, and helped raise $110,131 for their classrooms. Perhaps most telling about their success is that almost half of the donors of the Social Media Challenge were inspired by one of these teachers. There were a total of 2,401 donors to just this leaderboard!
Other winners in each of the Social Media Challenge leaderboards, include:
Tech Blogs: Venture Capital/Tech Blogger, Fred Wilson (A VC), inspired 213 individuals to give to his campaign.
Gawker: Gawker’s properties mobilized 84 donors, proving they could put their money where their mouth is
Twitter: Twitter, though a first-time community, entered the fray and were led by Livia. She engaged 52 of her followers in the Social Media Challenge.
We also would like to recognize all of the Social Media Challenge participants and a few communities who joined us in the Challenge for the first time this year. They include: Ariba, Stack Overflow, Seattle 2.0, Mashable, Dr. Pal, Geobloggers, Christina’s LIS, Twitter, Biz Stone, Livia Stone, SocialBrite, The Intersection, 80beats, Gawker Media, Brooklyn Schools, The Nature Blog Network, SB Nation, Serious Eats, Nosh with Me, innonate, David Berkowitz, Kim Molodofsky, Yvonne Michelle, the Colorado Blogging Community, the Twitter 140 Conference, Performance Magazine, Greentech, and the entire BlogHer community!
Interested in creating your own Giving Page and starting your own mini ‘challenge?’ Check out this section of our website!
In the last four weeks, bloggers, twitterers and their 4,327 friends/fans/followers have helped raised $585,691 for DonorsChoose.org classrooms in need of essential resources. With only 24 hours left in the Social Media Challenge, several of the participants need your help getting to the finish line. A few are even offering up some incentives to hit their goals:
BlogHer, the largest community of women bloggers, is targeting local cities in their fundraising. The Seattle Chapter is looking for some help in these final hours. The incentive? BlogHer, Mona, will “spray you with glitter.” Support any of their chapters, here.
Liva, who sits atop our Twitter leaderboard, is offering up cupcakes to folks in the Bay Area who help fund the last few projects on her page. Support her, here. Mmm… her cupcakes look yummy!
Coincidentally, the Social Media Challenge ends on Halloween so even if none of these incentives suit your fancy, let’s give these classrooms a special TREAT! Click HERE to donate to ANY of the Challenge supporters.
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This weekend, the Bloggers, Twitterers and Teachers quietly hit a significant milestone in the Social Media Challenge, our month-long competition to raise awareness and funds for public schools. Together, they’ve raised $300,000 in just 26 days. Re-call that last year bloggers single-handedly raised $270,000. Thanks to an amazing match offer from HP we hope to cross the finish line (this Saturday, October 31st) strong.
How are they stacking up?
The Bet Red Team (TomatoNation.com ) is showing their true colors, a committed and fearless bunch, they’ve raised $132,725 and have mobilized 965 citizen philanthropists!
Next up, Fred Wilson (A VC) holds it down for the Tech Bloggers. His community has raised $17,247!
Rounding out the pack, a Twitterer, Livia! Using 140-character missives, she’s raised $9,824 through her followers!
With 5 more days left to the competition, it’s not over yet. There are thousands of classrooms and students in need of your help. Please support ANY of the Social Media Challenge participants who are blogging and tweeting their way to the finish! CLICK HERE to check out the Challenge.
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It goes without saying that the Social Media Challenge tends to elicit a fair amount of antics; from Tomato dances, to tattoos, to straight up smack talk, but one of the more amusing parts of the challenge comes courtesy of the ScienceBlogs network, a Seed Media group venture. ScienceBlogs, the largest online community dedicated to science, is “a digital science salon featuring the leading bloggers from a wide array of scientific disciplines.” For the last three years, this community of bloggers has been a staple of the Social Media Challenge, making their presence known with the wittiest and coolest names.
Beyond their amazing names, the community has collectively raised $110,000 for DonorsChoose.org in the last two years. This year, they’re on track to make another big contribution, having raised $20, 384 for public school classrooms in just 3 weeks.
A dedicated bunch, trying to encourage science and technology innovation in public schools!
Non Profit Tech authority, Amy Sample Ward and Social Media Guru JD Lasica just collaborated on a really neat article and video highlighting our Social Media Challenge as an effective example of using Web 2.0 technologies to raise awareness and funds for a cause.
Check out Amy’s awesome post here, and JD’s video by clicking the image below:
JD has also thrown his hat into the ring with his website SocialBrite, a strategy and consulting company focused on social tools for social change. Check out the SocialBright Giving Page, here.
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Philanthropy from Manhattan and the Beltway to Hollywood and the Valley!
In the last few weeks of the Social Media Challenge, we’ve noticed a some what silent ‘competitor’ emerge in the ranks. At first glance, Gawker Media, whose properties include: Gawker, Deadspin, Kotaku, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Gizmodo,and Lifehacker, doesn’t seem like the most ‘obvious’ contender as the most philanthropic of our participants. After all, it’s mainly known as an authority on political, tech, financial and celebrity gossip. Yet, in the last two weeks, the site has engaged an impressive number of its readers to help raise over $3,000 to support public schools across the country.
A number of the properties have mobilized their readers around classroom projects that speak to the site’s content. Jezebel, for example, has focused “on a few worthy projects that aim to promote self-confidence among young women through education.” Lifehacker, a site dedicated to DIY and life resources is promoting projects that incorporate technology and organization in the classroom, choosing projects like “Give Our Students the Organized Classroom they Need!” Finally, Deadspin, a site for sports-fanatics, chose to focus on classroom projects that promote physical activity. In an attempt to make light of a classroom’s request for basketballs, writer A.J. Daulerio noted “Basketballs are needed here. Spaldings, they say. They’re tired of shooting rotten melons into waste baskets.”
True to their game, Gawker Media is showing that there can be some “fun” in fundraising. With 13 projects left to fund in 11 days, please consider funding one today.
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Every year during the Social Media Challenge, our month-long initiative to help raise awareness and $$ for public schools across the country, we interact with a whole host of folks using the power of emerging media to do good. There are the usual suspects like the Science Bloggers, who band together with a ton of fortitude and wit to fundraise, the Tech Bloggers, who are a particularly innovative lot when it comes to the methods they employ (see Kara Swisher’s kids), but most recently we’ve welcomed a whole slew of new participants. We hope to ’spotlight’ on a few of the new-comers (and old-timers) who are helping to make a difference this October.
First up, TWITTER!
This past year, Twitter has become one of the fastest growing online communities. Celebs, publications and even non-profits, like us, have all caught on to the craze. This October, Twitterers have harnessed their power and influence to do good by participating in the Social Media Challenge. A few standout participants:
The comedian-thinker…
Baratunde Thurston- a self-described “Comedian, Vigilante Pundit, Co-Founder Jack & Jill Politics, Web Editor at The Onion, and TV Host (Future Of…) with the Popular Science Channel.” Quite a mouthful! Currently a Fort Greene native, he’s out to support public schools in New York. Donate to his page, here.
The husband and wife duo duking it out to see whose more philanthropic…
Biz, co-founder of Twitter and his wife, Livia, a wildlife rehabber. What makes them awesome? The two are independently fundraising; Biz for literacy projects and Livia for projects throughout California. We try to stay impartial during the Social Media Challenge, but from the looks of things, Livia is holding it down for Cali, hard! Check out their Giving Pages, here (Biz) and here (Livia), as well as Biz’ twitter-rific Twitter Blog post “Join the Philanthropic Challenge.”
and finally, an awesome DonorsChoose.org supporter…
Anna Karplus, an everyday Twitter user (@nanstar), threw her hat in the ring to help out SoCal public schools and she’s already raised a whopping $500 in 5 days. Living proof that any person can help make a difference in the Social Media Challenge. Support her projects, here.
While we’re on the topic of Twitter, DonorsChoose.org has been actively using it as a tool to interact with our donors and teachers. Follow us @DonorsChoose…
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It’s not just the bloggers, twitterers and online media folks who get all riled up about the Social Media Challenge. Our staff has been drinking the lycopene kool-aid and seems to have a case of the TomatoNation.com.
Channeling Sarah Bunting and co. are our Operations Team mates (left to right): Abby F. (Customer Service Associate), Allyson G. (Office Manager) and Karina L. (Feedback Team Associate). How do you show your Social Media Challenge colors?
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