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By Dan
Friday,
Feb 12, 2010 at 1:45pm
Yesterday we launched the most generous match offer ever seen on DonorsChoose.org. And thanks to the incredible support of the Pershing Square Foundation and citizen philanthropists across the country, our first ever Presidents’ Day sale has SOLD OUT!
Don’t worry, if you missed this sale opportunity, you can still help by donating to classroom projects for under $100.
Starting Thursday morning, the Pershing Square Foundation funded American history and civics projects down to $98 – on the condition that citizen philanthropists (you!) took the projects across the finish line. And you did it! Over 600 citizen philanthropists funded the remainder of more than 675 projects, directing over $315,000 to classrooms in need in one day.
You helped support projects primarily in high poverty public school classrooms, that are helping students learn about the Constitution, compete in a nationwide history contest, and read about American government.
Thank you Pershing Square Foundation, and thank you citizen philanthropists for making our first Presidents’ Day sale an overwhelming success!
Would your company or foundation consider sponsoring a Double Your Impact or Almost Home match offer?
By Candice
Thursday,
Sep 17, 2009 at 3:56pm
Thanks to the generosity of the Koret Foundation, California teachers, both familiar with and new to DonorsChoose.org, will receive help in bringing their classroom projects to life. All teachers who are members of the California Teachers Empowerment Network (CTEN) and one lucky colleague will receive a $50.00 DonorsChoose.org giving card to use on books, microscopes, paintbrushes or whatever these teachers need for their classrooms!
CTEN is comprised of teachers dedicated to providing fellow teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. CTEN believes that advocating for open dialogue and informed choices will empower teachers to experience greater satisfaction and success in this profession. We are grateful to the Koret Foundation for supporting these informed and dedicated professionals!
By Kirk
Wednesday,
Aug 5, 2009 at 5:24pm
Last week, DonorsChoose.org Founder and CEO Charles Best helped Build-A-Bear Workshop honor 12 amazing kids from across the country. These passionately driven children, dubbed “Huggable Heroes,” each have made a significant impact in their communities and around the world by starting their own charitable organizations. You can read more about the Huggable Heroes here.
Thursday night, the Heroes were honored at a dinner at the St. Louis Zoo. Charles was able to meet the kids, share with them how he created and grew DonorsChoose.org, and inspire them to continue helping those in need. He was as impressed with each of them as they were with him!
The following morning, the Heroes participated in a service project at a local St. Louis public school. They helped paint an international mural at Mason Elementary to support the school’s diverse international student community. Click here to view the media coverage of this event. Charles also was interviewed on the local NBC affiliate, which you can watch here.
The events concluded with a press conference, attended by St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams, local state politicians, Build-A-Bear staff, and Charles. Those in attendance received DonorsChoose.org GivingCards and were excited to hear the impact the organization has had in the community, including over $175,000 in materials for St. Louis public school classrooms last school year. At the press conference, DonorsChoose.org announced that the first project for the 2009-2010 school year in St. Louis had been funded to provide listening materials for English language learners at Mason Elementary, thanks to a donation from Build-A-Bear.
By Kirk
Tuesday,
Jun 16, 2009 at 10:52pm
Build-A-Bear Workshop continues to partner with DonorsChoose.org to inspire its customers to make a difference in the lives of children. The retailer is donating a portion of the sales of its new Bearville Outfitters Virtual Stuff Game Cards (pictured below) to DonorsChoose.org and other charities. Customers who purchase the cards will vote for their favorite charity (currently DonorsChoose.org or First Book, but other charities may be added in the future), and Build-A-Bear Workshop will donate to that group.
The Bearville Outfitters Cards are a new offering from Build-A-Bear Workshop for customers to use at Buildabearville.com. Buildabearville.com is a new online virtual world where customers of all ages can create an online character, interact with others, participate in games and quests, and learn about giving back to the community. The virtual world is free to participate in, but customers can purchase Bearville Outfitters Virtual Stuff Game Cards to get rides, clothing, furniture, and a house for their online avatar.
Check out the press release for more information. DonorsChoose.org is proud to continue partnering with Build-A-Bear Workshop and thankful for their commitment to helping children learn.
Be sure to visit a Build-A-Bear Workshop store (or their website) to purchase a Bearville Outfitters Virtual Stuff Game Card and select DonorsChoose.org as your favorite charity!
By Kirk
Monday,
Jun 15, 2009 at 6:42pm
Teachers in St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) have taken DonorChoose.org by storm! Thanks to partnerships with district administrators and superintendent Kelvin Adams, hundreds of SLPS teachers heard about DonorsChoose.org for the first time and began submitting their classroom needs.
This school year, 95% of the 87 schools in the district have submitted a classroom request at DonorsChoose.org, and over 80% have been fully funded. Seventy-six percent of SLPS teachers who submitted a project have been fully funded (which is higher than our national average of 66%), and over 400 teachers registered to use DonorsChoose.org for the first time.
Over 6,000 SLPS students have benefitted from over 8,000 hours of instruction, and donations in excess of $190,000 were provided from citizen philanthropists across the nation. Local business leaders (most prominently Maxine Clark, CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop and new DonorsChoose.org National Advisory Board member) also participated in funding projects and spreading the word to more teachers in the city. We are so excited that SLPS students are having greater educational opportunities thanks to our wonderful donors, and we look forward to continued support of the district in the years to come.
By Alicia
Friday,
Jun 12, 2009 at 12:34pm
Crate and Barrel, the first ever GivingCard partner of DonorsChoose.org, recently completed its fifth GivingCard campaign, which put $25.00 DonorsChoose.org GivingCards in the e-mail inboxes of their customers across the country. The results of this campaign are staggering, with over 347,000 students positively impacted and more than 14,500 projects brought to life, resulting in 434,000+ hours of classroom instruction!
Since 2006, the Crate and Barrel GivingCard partnership has allowed the company to partner with their customers in support of public education. Many Crate and Barrel staff have their own personal connections to the classroom. Crate and Barrel CEO, Barbara Turf, was a fifth grade mathematics teacher when she first began working at Crate and Barrel stores during her holiday and summer breaks. In fact, many of Crate and Barrel’s executives started out as teachers, which is probably why the company is known for doing such a great job educating its employees and customers about its products. As Turf commented, “we know from experience that without funding, many teachers would have to spend their own money to provide their students with even the most basic of supplies, not to mention the materials needed for projects that encourage creative discovery.”
The feedback from Crate and Barrel GivingCard redeemers has been overwhelmingly positive. In addition to adding over $20,000 of their own funds, Crate and Barrel customers tweeted about the campaign and posted comments to their Facebook pages and blogs. A sampling of customer feedback is provided below:
• “Wow, I just got the best email campaign ever. It was from Crate & Barrel – they sent a $25 voucher to redeem at DonorsChoose.org. So cool.”
• “This weekend I had an email in my inbox from Crate and Barrel offering me the opportunity to donate to a project of my choosing – paid for by C&B. ….I found (to my delight) an opportunity to contribute to something very real, very concrete and very much in my own back yard…My thanks goes to Crate and Barrel for this wonderful gift to me and to the students in that classroom…”
• “Crate and Barrel sent me a code to donate to my project of choice at DonorsChoose.org. This is seriously fantastic. Way to go Crate!”
• “Excited to have received and used a DonorsChoose.org GivingCard from Crate & Barrel in my email inbox. Nice, C&B, very nice!”
• “Joy! Crate and Barrel GAVE me $25 to donate at DonorsChoose.org and I gave it locally”
• “Love Crate and Barrel, they just sent me an email with a $25 gift certificate to use at DonorsChoose & support a classroom. So cool.”
• “Crate&Barrel’s new outreach: gift card for donation to donorschoose.org – lets recipient participate in giving process. Clever idea.”
DonorsChoose.org and teachers and students across the country would like to thank Crate and Barrel and its customers for their ongoing support of public school teachers and students!
By Natalie
Saturday,
May 9, 2009 at 1:44am
Students at MacArthur Elementary are learning valuable lessons about preserving the environment thanks to materials received through DonorsChoose.org. Ms. Cummings’s kindergarten classroom now has recycling bins and their own compost bin, which gives the students a chance to get their hands dirty while providing lessons about biology and recycling.
The environmentally friendly kindergarteners caught the attention of a reporter at The News on 6 in Tulsa who visited their classroom last week. The students showed their enthusiasm for the creepy crawlers that ultimately break down food scraps into healthy soil.
The green lesson plans are clearly making an impact on the students. According to Ms. Cummings, “Parents come to me all the time telling me my child is on me all the time about recycling paper and plastics.”
In addition to helping teach the kids about preserving the planet, DonorsChoose.org grants have boosted their reading skills and introduced them to cultures halfway around the world.
Click here to view the inspiring story from The News on 6 in Tulsa.
Click here to view other projects from MacArthur Elementary that are currently being sponsored by the George Kaiser Family Foundation.
By Kari
Wednesday,
Apr 8, 2009 at 10:30am
DonorsChoose.org has joined the Get Schooled project! The Get Schooled project is partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Viacom, which they hope to find new ways to improve education, raise graduation rates and better prepare students for life.
Within the next five years, the goal is to raise the percentage of students graduating from high school and post-secondary education (college, community college or trade/vocational school). DonorsChoose.org along with several other organizations are featured in the Take Action section of the site–with DonorsChoose.org allowing visitors to make a direct impact on classrooms nationwide!
Learn more about the initiative and view the video messages from celebrities supporting the campaign, like: America Ferrera, Harrison Ford, Meryl Streep, Mark McGrath, George Lopez, Salt-N-Pepa, Will Arnett, Ne-Yo, DMC, Nick Cannon, Jon Hamm—to name a few!
By Alex
Tuesday,
Mar 31, 2009 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.
By Alicia
Tuesday,
Mar 10, 2009 at 2:17pm
Every Wednesday evening from 6:00–6:30, Central Time, KZUM 89.3FM in Lincoln, Nebraska airs Room 101 hosted by longtime teacher Michael Baker. The radio show is dedicated to public education issues in the community, Nebraska, and the nation as a whole, with programming that features deliberations and discussion with guests and listeners.
This Wednesday, March 11th, Michael Baker will host guest Alicia Mohr, Deputy Director of the Central and South Regions of DonorsChoose.org. Listen in to learn more about DonorsChoose.org, as we explore its history, operations and current successes.
Thanks to Michael Baker for reaching out to DonorsChoose.org to help spread awareness about our program!
People not in the Lincoln, Nebraska, listening area may listen online.
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