The Great Give-Back Birthday Celebration at DonorsChoose.org has been underway since May, so the birthday team wanted to take some time to share great birthday stories for each month we’ve been celebrating.
In May- a group of staff members at the CAA Foundation donated their birthday to DonorsChoose.org- Creative Artists Agency Foundation’s Give Back Birthday.If you have a group of friends with birthdays in the same month, consider creating one page and celebrating together!
In June- a couple donates their upcoming wedding and birthday to public school students- how sweet! - Scott and Olivia’s Give-Back Page
For July- we highlight a 9 year old girl who is one of many young children donating their birthday for a good cause - Kaia’s Give Back Birthday
If you want to be our next great story, join in the celebration! Donate your birthday to support classroom projects at DonorsChoose.org, and then to invite all of your friends to the party.Click here to get started now!
Have your cake and donate too!
-The DC.org Birthday Team
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Fred Wilson, venture capitalist, husband and father of three, and DonorsChoose.org board member, is turning 48 on August 20th! And even though he loves to receive home cooked brownies for his birthday, this year he is asking people to support music education projects at DonorsChoose.org instead.
George the Good Dogg, a Golden Retriever from Texas, is doing his part to help public school students across the country. This year for his birthday, he is asking his friends (with the help of his owner of course!) to donate to his favorite classroom projects through his “Pimp My Birthday Extravaganza” GivingPage. George has already raised nearly $400 from 20 donors!
Click here to donate to a project in support of George the Good Dogg’s birthday! As George says, “Give and your bowl will always be full.”
Capitol Records Nashville artist Darius Rucker and the well-known voice of the Grammy-winning group Hootie & The Blowfish doesn’t want presents for his birthday this year.
Instead, Rucker is asking fans and friends to support classroom requests from South Carolina’s high-poverty schools along the I-95 corridor. You may remember that President Obama turned America’s attention to just one of these schools, J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon County, S.C., during his first State of the Union speech.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina on May 13, 1966, Rucker hopes this birthday will be an opportunity to improve the education that high-poverty students in his home state receive by asking you to support one of the classroom requests posted on this page.
In the spirit of highlighting Great Give-Back Birthday’s we wanted to share a fun clip of Stephen Colbert waxing philosophical about how he’s planning to celebrate his upcoming Super Sweet 16 (May 13th).
The Huffington Post debuted an exclusive video today from Stephen Colbert, announcing that he is celebrating his May 13th birthday with DonorsChoose.org. In lieu of gifts, Colbert is asking his fans to donate to a classroom project at DonorsChoose.org at www.donorschoose.org/colbertbirthday.
Check out the blog post (which includes a funny birthday story from DonorsChoose.org founder Charles Best), to see Colbert’s video.
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Our Tech team recently unveiled ‘brand-spanking’ functionality geared at creating a better experience for users who are interested in creating a personalized DonorsChoose.org Giving Page. Setting up a Giving Page allows you to create a virtual registry of classroom projects that speak to your interests and then easily share them with your friends, family and supporters. Simply put, the Giving Page is a customizable wishlist that allows you to easily spread the ‘gift of giving.’ Setting one up is pretty simple, if you follow the steps below:
Step 1: If you don’t already have a DonorsChoose.org account Create an Account
Step 2: If you already have an account, or have just set-up an account, navigate to Create a Giving Page
Step 3: Once there, select the campaign that you’d like to be associated with
Step 4: Great, you’ve selected the campaign (here, The Great Give-Back Birthday), now you can customize the look and feel of your Giving Page. You can edit the title of your page, the message that appears at the top of your page and even upload an image to the page.
Step 5: After you’ve customized your page, you can add classroom projects that you’d like to see featured. You can elect to have your page automatically uploaded with projects by selecting one of the filter options, OR you can manually pick projects to appear on your giving page. Note: you can add or remove projects at any point during (and after) set up.
Step 6: Once projects have been added to your page, click ‘proceed.’ You are now ready to SHARE your wishlist with friends. There are five options:
Email: This feature auto populates a message that you can send to your friends. You can easily add email addresses from your address book.
Facebook: This feature allows you to share your giving page using “Connect with Facebook.” You can send a message to you Facebook friends or simply post your page to your wall.
Links: Your Giving Page has a unique permalink. Post this link to Twitter, add it to your Skype/Instant Messenger status, or simply share it with friends. Donations made using this link will automatically be credited to your page.
Widgets: Our team has created a suite of dynamic widgets that act as a miniature version of your Giving Page. Track your progress, your impact and your awesomeness using this widget. Upload it to your blog or website and get your entire network tracking your progress!
RSS: Add a feed of your Giving Page to your feed reader or website and watch your projects come to life.
Once your Giving Page is created, consider adding a message to your email signature to help promote your classroom wishlist (ex. Join my Give-Back Birthday Party at DonorsChoose.org)
Voila, you’ve created a Giving Page!
If you’re still having difficulties setting up your page or need help troubleshooting an issue, please send our Customer Service team a note and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
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Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” and DonorsChoose.org today announced the launch of The Great Give-Back Birthday. This online celebration enables individuals to donate their birthdays to support specific classroom projects submitted by teachers nationwide.
Colbert, who celebrates his birthday on May 13, created a birthday giving page at DonorsChoose.org filled with his favorite classroom projects posted by teachers on the website (www.DonorsChoose.org/ColbertBirthday). In lieu of traditional birthday gifts, Colbert is asking his friends, family and fans to visit his birthday giving page and support those projects.
Together with DonorsChoose.org, Colbert has also issued an invitation to individuals across the country to create their own birthday giving pages.
“This year, you can help needy classrooms on your birthday with DonorsChoose.org,” said Stephen Colbert. “And the great thing is, if you give your birthday away, you don’t age that year. Look it up.” Added Colbert, “DonorsChoose.org makes me feel like every day is my birthday. That, and my 364 counterfeit drivers licenses”.
To spread the word, Colbert created a short video about The Great Give-Back Birthday, which will debut at 10:00AM on Tuesday, May 5 at The Huffington Post. Details of the video remain top secret. Visit www.HuffingtonPost.com next Tuesday.
“We’re challenging everyone in America to collectively donate 100 birthdays and generate $100,000 in donations during the month of May,” said Charles Best, founder and CEO, DonorsChoose.org. “Thousands of classrooms across the country lack the materials that enable kids to success. And with budgets squeezed, teachers need the support that concerned citizens can offer.”
With our Great Give-Back Birthday underway, our team has been doing a lot of IMPORTANT research around birthdays. We thought we’d share some of our ‘highly-classified’ findings:
More people celebrate their birthdays in August than in any other month (about 9% of all people). The two other months that rate high for birthdays are July and September.
Close to 2 billion Birthday Cards are sent each year in the U.S. alone, accounting for nearly 58 percent of all cards sent.
The world’s largest birthday cake was created in 2005 for Las Vegas’ centennial. 30,000 half-sheet cakes and nearly 40,000 pounds of frosting later, they had the World’s largest birthday cake!
A recent survey suggests that more people are born on October 5 in the United States than any other day. The least common birth date in the U.S. is May 22nd.
and… a bit of a strange one…
Since your last birthday 31,536,000 seconds have passed.
No matter how many seconds have passed since your last birthday, it’s never too early (or late) to sign up to be a part of the most inspiring online donation celebration, our Great Give-Back Birthday!
In case you were curious, here’s a picture of the infamous Las Vegas cake:
Everyone has their own way of observing a birthday. Here at DonorsChoose.org, we’ve established a unique tradition for celebrating our colleague’s birthdays filled with tons of fanfare (and a dash of self-deprecation). On the day of, Allyson trades in her Office Manager cap for a party hat and sends out a personalized “Happy Birthday” message to our entire staff. The messages are not only quirky, but occasionally revealing!
Here’s a small taste of how hilarious these emails can get:
It’s that Atlantic-City-Gambling, W-36th-St-Restaurant-Dwelling, Playing-Tennis-Against-Charles-and-Losing, Former-Corvette-Driving, Spreadsheet-Loving,Wharton-MBA-Earning, Stella-Drinking, Shakira-Karaoke-Singing, Soon-To-Be-With-Parents-Living, 1AM-Dashboard-Sending, Executive Vice President of Operations Cesar Bocanegra’s Birthday(Cheers! Excitement!Balloons!)
This spring, a handful of our colleagues (Abby, Alan, Frankie, Kris, Kirk) have opted for a new way to celebrate, by donating their birthdays to our Great Give-Back Birthday online celebration.
We hope that you’ll consider joining in on our party and donating your birthday, as well.
Check out the Great Give-Back Birthday flyer for more information. If you have additional questions or need help getting started, email birthday (at) donorschoose (dot) org.
