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We’re constantly thinking of ways to work more deeply with districts who are looking to get the most for their students through DonorsChoose. This year, we’re launching the District Partnership Program to collaborate with districts that want to make DonorsChoose an intentional part of their school fundraising strategy.

We’re thrilled to welcome the first cohort of participating districts!

• Atlanta Public Schools
• Chicago Public Schools
• Compton Unified School District
• Highline Public Schools
• Indianapolis Public Schools
• Los Angeles Unified School District
• Oklahoma City Public Schools
• Portland Public Schools
• Rockland R-1 School District
• Stockton Unified School District

When teachers, administrators, and DonorsChoose collaborate, classrooms can shine

In addition to the benefits that all school districts receive when their teachers use DonorsChoose, districts who partner with DonorsChoose also receive the following:

• Customized landing page. Donors can give directly to district partners through a dynamically updated webpage that showcases impact. Check out the landing page of Los Angeles Unified School District!
• First notification of funding opportunities. We alert district leaders when companies or foundations are supporting projects, matching donations, or offering other funding incentives for teachers.
• Annual presentation for district leaders. DonorsChoose team members will share data on the innovative ways teachers at the partnering district are using our platform to secure new resources for students.

Celebrating across the country

We recently visited LAUSD to announce the launch of the program, and DonorsChoose board member Yvette Nicole Brown joined the celebration!

The media’s taken notice of the District Partnership Program — check out this article from EdWeek, or take a look at district features in The San Fernando Valley Sun, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Stockton Record.

Curious how your district can leverage DonorsChoose to get the most for students? Get started with our resources built for district leaders like you.

It’s been a busy few months for the DonorsChoose team! We’ve been meeting with district leaders, education organizations, and policy thinkers across the country to better understand how we can serve the needs of public school teachers and their districts.

From ISTE to EdVenture, here’s a rundown of where you might have seen some DonorsChoose faces — and where we’ll be coming up!

NSBA's Equity Symposium

‍In January, our founder Charles Best spoke to 700 school board members, superintendents, and NSBA staff at the NSBA Equity Symposium. He spoke about how school districts use platforms like DonorsChoose to support school wide initiatives and close the achievement gap, building a more equitable education system. Learn more about our work with NSBA.

‍CoSN Envision 2030 Conference

‍Keya and Sam, two members of our Advocacy and Public Partnerships team, headed up to Portland, Oregon in April for the annual COSN conference. They shared classroom technology trends we’ve uncovered through our data, and learned more about the needs — especially around compatibility — of district technology directors. Learn more about our work with CoSN.

NAESP Pre-K–8 Conference

‍Danielle and Kirk, also on our Advocacy and Public Partnerships team, visited Spokane, Washington for the NAESP conference in July. They led a session on “Crowdfunding Best Practices to Help Your School,” and handed out DonorsChoose gift cards to everyone who attended. Learn more about our work with NAESP.

‍ISTE Conference

‍In June, Sam took a trip down to Philadelphia to attend the ISTE conference with our Business Relations team, who manages our 22 integrated vendors. In partnership with Best Buy for Education, Amy, Director of Business Relations, led a presentation on classroom and educational technology.

‍NASSP Principals Conference

‍DonorsChoose founder Charles made another appearance in Boston at the July NASSP conference. Charles shared information about our org and the specific measures we have in place to support secondary schools principals. Learn more about our work with NASSP.

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EdVenture Summit

‍As we headed into the back-to-school season, Danielle visited Idaho to speak on the EdVenture Summit main stage, where she introduced our organization and shared the impact our community has had to date.

‍Coming Up

‍Over the next few months, folks from our team will be at the ASBO International Conference from 10/25–10/28 in National Harbor, Maryland on and at the Grants Professional Association Conference in Washington, D.C. on 11/7. We hope to see you there!

"DonorsChoose.org is starting a free program to help school leaders find resources and funding opportunities to address the needs of their teachers. The District Partnership Program is working with 10 school district to pilot the initiative. Each district gets access to a customized landing page on DonorsChoose.org where they can monitor materials donated and get early notifications on new philanthropic funding opportunities for their teachers."

Read the full report on thejournal.com

"AUSTIN (KXAN) — Overton Elementary school is $10,000 richer Monday morning. Teachers often reach into their own wallets to pay for classroom supplies. Charles Best, CEO of DonorsChoose.org and Chevron representatives want that trend to stop. Best and others gathered students, teachers and faculty inside the Overton gymnasium. Three boxes decorated with bows and #FuelYourSchool signs sat in front of everyone on a table."

Watch the full report on kxan.com

"In a special assembly, a $15,000 donation was presented to Gates Street Elementary School in Lincoln Heights, the money coming from donorschoose.org. "Donors Choose has done wonderful things for teaching. It's just brought so much more activities that I have in the classroom," said Diane Yokoyama, a second-grade teacher at Gates Elementary. The organization allows people to donate directly to specific school classroom projects created by teachers. "

Watch the full report on abc7.com

"Good Day Live host, Julie Henricks, spoke with Charles Best, founder of DonorsChoose.org, and Christi Woodworth, Vice President ofpublic relations at SONIC, about Limeades for Learning."

Watch the full interview on mywabashvalley.com

DonorsChoose and the National Association of Elementary School Principals teamed up to create the Principal Toolkit, designed to hep principals across the country empower their teachers and staff to use DonorsChoose.

In this toolkit you'll find:

• Case studies from principals who help teachers leverage DonorsChoose to support school-wide goals and priorities
• Four steps you can take to set your teachers and staff up for success
• Information on signing up for real-time notifications of your school's activity and funding incentives from DonorsChoose

Check out more back-to-school crowdfunding resources from NAESP, download the toolkit, and watch the DonorsChoose & NAESP webinar to help your school benefit even more from our national community of donors.

DonorsChoose and the National Alliance have teamed up to create a toolkit for charter school administrators looking to empower their teachers through DonorsChoose.

In this toolkit you'll find:

• Case studies from charter school leaders leveraging DonorsChoose to support school-wide priorities and innovative initiatives
• Four steps you can take to set your teachers up for success
• Information on signing up for free, regular reporting

Learn more about our with with the National Alliance, and download the toolkit.

"Hector Escobedo at Terra Environmental High School immerses his students in engineering, with the help of Donors Choose."

Watch the full report on nbcmiami.com

Public school administrators have unique sets of needs when it comes to teachers' use of crowdfunding platforms. To better understand and serve those needs, our team works with a range of education associations and organizations. In addition to learning more about the needs of superintendents, principals, tech leaders, and other administrators, we also collaborate with these orgs on district toolkits. These toolkits give district leaders insight into PreK-12 crowdfunding best practices and how teachers, students, and administrators alike can beset benefit from platforms like DonorsChoose.

Take a look at the resources we've built with each organization we work with.

School Superintendents Association

Consortium for School Networking

National Association of Elementary School Principals

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

National Association of Secondary School Principals

National School Boards Association

Since Joe Simo joined Centennial Middle School in Colorado as principal in 2013, he’s taken a “relationships first” approach to leadership. In addition to building strong ties among and with his staff, Joe wanted to make sure that the 620 diverse students attending Centennial Middle School had the resources they needed to thrive academically and socially. By focusing on the school’s dedication to character development, teacher professional development, and ensuring teachers could access as many resources as possible, Joe turned Centennial Middle School into the “Colorado school to watch.”

Removing Roadblocks to Innovation

Joe sees one of his primary responsibilities as removing roadblocks for teachers, and often those roadblocks come in the form of a lack of funding or resources. As a school of innovation, teachers at Centennial Middle School have some extra freedom to create and experiment in the classroom, but with a district-set budget, there isn’t always the funding to try everything teachers dream up. Instead of turning down those ideas, Joe directs his teachers to DonorsChoose.

By using DonorsChoose, Ms. Hutchel was able to get basic kitchen supplies so her students could learn about cooking and healthy eating, while Mr. Thompson received DIY drone kits so his students could flex their coding and engineering skills. These are just two examples of the nearly 20 classroom project requests funded from Centennial Middle School teachers this past school year.

Supporting Teachers' Professional Growth

In addition to getting the most learning resources possible, Joe Simo is also dedicated to helping his teachers access the professional development they need to grow and thrive as educators. In addition to the 20% of his budget dedicated to teacher professional development, Joe also encourages teachers to use DonorsChoose to fund PD experiences.

Increasing Funding Schoolwide through DonorsChoose

By supporting teacher-fueled innovation and encouraging the use of DonorsChoose, Joe has increased Centennial Middle School’s classroom project funding from just $1,200 before he started to more than $23,000 today. By tapping into the national network of donors, companies, and foundation partners who give through DonorsChoose, Centennial Middle School teachers have been able to give their students more than they ever could have using just a district budget.

Since Joe Simo took over as principal, every project created by a teacher at Centennial Middle School has been fully funded. Joe has received recognition as Colorado Middle School Principal of the Year and as Secondary School Principal of the year by CASE, the Colorado Association of School Executives.

Read how more principals like Joe have used DonorsChoose to support their teachers in the Principal Toolkit co-published by DonorsChoose and NASSP, and see how you can help your teachers get more resources for students.

Since 2018, AASA and DonorsChoose have worked together to support school districts looking to leverage crowdfunding to support district priorities. We’ve teamed up with AASA once again to bring district leaders another toolkit to set your district up for crowdfunding success.

After releasing the back-to-school toolkit in Fall 2018, which shared pre-k–12 crowdfunding best practices along with tips for helping your teachers use DonorsChoose effectively, we heard feedback from district leaders on the challenges of implementing an effective crowdfunding policy. To support leaders implementing crowdfunding policies that serve the transparency and accountability needs of districts, while still encouraging and celebrating teacher innovation, we’ve built the Establishing Your Crowdfunding Policy Toolkit.

In this toolkit, you’ll find:

• A 6-step guide to effectively implementing a crowdfunding policy
• Case studies on districts that have had success with encouraging crowdfunding policies
• A model crowdfunding policy that you can implement directly or use as inspiration for your own
• Answers to frequently asked questions

Download the toolkit and start setting up your crowdfunding policy.

We’re thrilled to work with you to bring your teachers’ classroom dreams to life. Questions about how DonorsChoose can support your district’s goals and priorities? Check out our page for district leaders.