DonorsChoose.org has introduced a new teacher points system in order to provide the best service and support possible to all our teachers.The core reason behind this change is that certain types of projects consistently require more time and money to fulfill than others. For example, it takes a DonorsChoose.org staff member just a few minutes to fulfill a project that requests only classroom materials and the total cost is less than $400. But it can take us 30 minutes of staff time to fulfill a project that requests a class trip.We of course want teachers using DonorsChoose.org to continue to request funding for field trips, class visitors, and other special requests! However, if we’re flooded by too many labor-intensive projects, it could prevent us from serving teachers well.Our new points system enables DonorsChoose.org to be more scalable and sustainable by having teachers earn and spend points for their classroom projects.In the new system, teachers will still earn points by confirming their project funding promptly and returning completed Thank You packets on time. However, the old categories of Freshman, Honor Roll, Dean’s List, and Valedictorian have been replaced by a “points spending” system which works as follows:Each type of classroom project will cost a certain number of points to post.
- Projects requesting $400 or less in materials from eSchoolMall will cost 1 point.
- Projects requesting more than $401 but less than $800 in materials from eSchoolMall will cost 2 points.
- Projects requesting $801 or more in materials from eSchoolMall will cost 4 points.
- Class Trips and Class Visitor projects will cost 6 points.
- Special Request (previously known as ‘Other’) projects will cost 8 points.
- Any project that combines more than one of the project types described above will be charged only once, but the charge will be based on the most expensive type of resource they are requesting (e.g. a project that combines a class trip and $820 in eSchoolMall materials will only cost 6 points).
New teachers will start their accounts with 3 points. All teachers who were already registered at DonorsChoose.org (with 0 or more points) when the new points system was introduced received an additional 3 points in their account. Teachers are allowed to have up to 8 projects in process at once.The more points teachers earn by submitting prompt confirmations and timely feedback, the more trips, classroom visitors, and special requests teachers can submit!We are excited that this new points system will work well for teachers while at the same time enabling DonorsChoose.org to efficiently fulfill many more classroom projects than ever before.- Cesar & the DonorsChoose.org Team
