A corporate partnership with DonorsChoose is the easiest, most direct way to direct your support for local classrooms on a national scale. By combining targeted, hyperlocal giving with data-rich feedback, we deliver custom, branded partnerships from one of the most trusted education charities in the country. Our partnerships have received recognition as best-in-class corporate social responsibility and impact campaigns, showing that when companies partner with DonorsChoose, you give students the resources they need — all while driving bottom-line success.

Check out this round-up of the awards our partnerships have won over the years, and see what we mean!

Samsung, Solve for Tomorrow: PR Daily Nonprofit Communications Award

2023 Winner | Category: Corporate/Nonprofit Partnership
Samsung's annual national competition gives students in grades 6–12 the opportunity to ask big questions and find big solutions through STEM — win up to $100,000 for their classrooms. With DonorsChoose pitching in to collaborate with vendors on prize fulfillment, Solve For Tomorrow continues to encourage students to explore, highlighting the benefits of increased funding for project-based, innovative STEM learning.

Panda Restaurant Group, Panda Cares: Ragan Communications CSR & Diversity Awards

2023 Winner | Category: Corporate-Community or Nonprofit Partnership
Panda Cares, the philanthropic arm of Panda Restaurant Group, teamed up with DonorsChoose to fund 25,800 teacher projects, deliver more than 9,000 meals to classrooms, and bring the "Let's Explore! Lunar New Year" curriculum to more than 4,000 classrooms. Bonus: with more than 4,400 engagements across Twitter/X and Facebook, this partnership sparked a sense of pride and community connection!

Nature Made, #TeachHealthy: Engage For Good Halo Awards

2022 Silver | Category: Education
In 2021, Nature Made and DonorsChoose partnered to supply teachers with hand sanitizer, PPE, air purifiers, and other health and wellness resources to help keep students and teachers stay healthy. #TeachHealthy activated nearly 18,500 individual donors through the match offers, funded more than 13,000 classroom projects, and helped to position Nature Made as a brand that cares about the big picture when it comes to wellness.

T-Mobile, #GiveThanksNotPranks: PR Daily Social Media & Digital Awards (2022), Shorty Impact Awards (2021)

Categories: Cause Marketing/CSR, Non-Profit Partnership
Forget April Fools Day: T-Mobile's campaign, #GiveThanksNotPranks, encourages people to express gratitude on April 1 instead of playing pranks, and part of that expression of gratitude meant matching donations to DonorsChoose. By donating $1 to DonorsChoose anytime someone shared a story of appreciation on social media with the hashtag #GiveThanksNotPranks and tagged @TMobile, T-Mobile directed $1,050,000 to teacher requests and garnered more than 10 million social media impressions.

Samsung, Solve for Tomorrow: Engage for Good Halo Awards 

2021 Silver | Category: Education
When COVID-19 presented new challenges for Samsung's annual STEM competition 'Solve For Tomorrow,' the program pivoted to become more accessible for applicants and teachers alike. Partnering with DonorsChoose meant Samsung could extend its commitment to STEM programs, creating the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Teacher Academy with MindSpark, another DonorsChoose partner.

Google.org, #ISeeMe: Ragan Communications CSR & Diversity Awards 

2021 Winner | Category: Education or Scholarship Program
Our partnership with Google.org took a two-pronged approach to make sure students across the country could see their identities reflected in their learning environment: support teachers from underrepresented backgrounds, and help bring diverse learning materials into the classroom. With 4,800 projects funded at 3,300 schools and $2 million applied to resource requests, we're proud to have helped build the impact of Google.org's #ISeeMe campaign.

Volkswagen, Drive Bigger:  Engage for Good Halo Awards: 

2020 Gold | Category: Education
To put the power of giving directly into consumer hands, Volkswagen dealerships distributed DonorsChoose gift cards to any customer who visited during the Drive Bigger campaign, as well as fully funded classroom projects in their market areas. The result was impressive: 640 participating dealerships across the US exceeded their sales goals during the campaign period, and $233,000 was distributed through donation card funding, benefitting nearly 500,000 students across the country.

Ripple, #BestSchoolDay: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2019 Silver | Category: Education
By setting their sights on making a record-breaking donation in a single day using a digital asset (XRP), blockchain-based global payments company Ripple was able to fully fund every active project on DonorsChoose, plus an additional 10 local projects per participating employee. To make the moment even more special, DonorsChoose Board Member Stephen Colbert announced this #BestSchoolDay campaign on The Late Show.   

PNC, Grow Up Great: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2018 Silver | Category: Education
PNC Bank's Grow Up Great is a $350 million, multi-year, bilingual initiative in early childhood education founded by one of the nation's largest banks. To continue that work, PNC awarded a $5 million grant to DonorsChoose specifically for supporting pre-K teachers and classrooms, thereby enabling DonorsChoose to expand our platform to include project requests from Head Start teachers across the nation. 

PwC, Summer Intern Data Program: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2018 Gold | Category: Employee Engagement
In order to attract and retain talented, passionate interns, PwC wanted to offer a skills-based employee volunteerism program that both allowed interns to develop their professional skills as well as have a hand in shaping PwC's giving. Partnering with DonorsChoose, PwC created five philanthropic experiments, each supported by a donation of $100,000, so that we could learn the best ways to put resources in the hands of as many students as possible. 

Staples, Think It Up: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2016 Silver | Category: Education
For Staples, school supplies are an essential component of its business. Think it Up, a national initiative to support student-powered, teacher-led DonorsChoose projects in classrooms across the country, was a natural extension of this work. With a $10 million pledge over three years, a PSA featuring Nick Jonas, and a national sweepstakes, Think It Up made a huge impact for classrooms across the country.

General Growth Properties, Celebrate Schools!: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2014 Gold | Category: Education
After a successful first year of experimenting with different marketing strategies, General Growth Properties and DonorsChoose teamed up to take their learnings and affect major change. By targeting their shoppers with personalized communication campaigns, offering in-mall shoppers DonorsChoose gift cards as incentives for joining tiered membership levels, and hosting Celebrate Schools talent shows at every mall location, the Celebrate Schools campaign successfully brought 10,484 classroom projects to life — and 88% of the shoppers responsible for activating all that funding were first-time donors to DonorsChoose.

Horace Mann, Turning Agents Into Educators: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2013 Gold | Category: Education
Horace Mann insurance agents know that when they first focus on creating relationships with the educators they serve, providing insurance and retirement products can become a collaborating, sincere relationship. Teaming up with DonorsChoose, Turning Agents Into Educators was a cause marketing campaign that allowed agents to develop relationships and access their target customers, introducing new educators to the benefits of DonorsChoose.

Clear Channel Communities & Chase Bank, Tools for Classrooms: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2013 Silver | Category: Education
Combine Clear Channel's robust audience, Chase Bank's financial commitment to lifting up local communities, and DonorsChoose's national network of teachers in need. Roll that all into a three-month radio campaign promoting a match donation offer led by Chase on DonorsChoose that airs nationally on 850 radio stations, reaches 237 million monthly U.S. listeners, and features the trusted voices of recording artists like Pitbull and Kelly Clarkson speaking up about literacy, poverty, music education, and self-esteem. The result: a winning partnership that makes a huge impact.

Groupon & JPMorgan Chase, G-Team Philanthropic Deal: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2012 Silver | Category: Transactional
When JPMorgan Chase committed $500,000 to underwriting DonorsChoose gift cards that would be sold via the daily deal site Groupon, they intended the promotion to last a week. Instead, the deal sold out in under 48 hours, drawing in everybody from passionate JPMorgan employees to first-time Groupon customers (30% of which were brand new users), making this deal the fastest sell-out for a Philanthropic Deal in Groupon history.

Microsoft-Bing, Our School Needs: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2011 Gold | Category: Digital Marketing
When Microsoft released search engine Bing in 2009, they knew they needed to distinguish their brand from other search engines while still keeping their customers' needs at the forefront. Funding 2,711 public school DonorsChoose classroom projects across the country established Bing as the search with a conscience, earning them high marks in the Engage for Good Halo Awards. 

SONIC Drive-In, Limeades for Learning: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2010 Silver | Category: Broadcast Video
Sometimes, affecting positive change in the world means meeting customers where they're at — literally. When consumers visited any SONIC during the 2009 Back-to-School Season and purchased a small Route 44-sized fountain or frozen drink, they received a code to vote online for their favorite public school teacher project on DonorsChoose, a strategy that led to funding nearly 1,500 projects and contributions of more than $630,000.

Crate & Barrel, Gift Card Distribution: Engage for Good Halo Awards

2008 Silver | Category: Transactional
This campaign had two objectives: deepen Crate & Barrel customer loyalty, and inspire civic engagement through DonorsChoose. By sending DonorsChoose gift certificates to select customers in three waves that incentivized funding the classroom project of their choice, Crate & Barrel was able to engage 15,000 customers — an extraordinary 12% direct mail response rate — and generate more than $500,000 to fund 6,000 classroom projects.

Interested in learning how your organization can partner with DonorsChoose to exceed your business goals? 

Visit our Partner Center and contact our Partner team today!

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