DonorsChoose: Helping You Help Teachers (and Students)

Posted on January 8, 2007

DonorsChoose is a site I learned about recently that allows people like you and I to help teachers get what they need for their classrooms. The process to find and help a teacher is very simple:

Head to DonorsChoose.org and search their database of needs. The search is actually pretty comprehensive as you can see below.

Once you find an opportunity you can fund all or part of the request giving you flexibility. After the request has been fully funded, DonorsChoose will buy the supplies and send them along to the teacher. If that wasn’t cool enough you’ll then receive a package of letters and photographs from the students.

One of my best buds is currently a teacher in the NYC public school system and my aunt is a public school teacher in Massachusetts so this system hits home to me. That said, I was a little upset when I learned that some school systems aren’t allowing teachers to use DonorsChoose due to beurocratic issues (i.e. school committee needs to approve everything, worried about bribery or people influencing kids with certain products, etc.). However, I think DonorsChoose has a set up in which most of these concerns are quelled.

Hopefully more schools will embrace DonorsChoose and similar concepts over time because the kids will ultimately benefit and that’s what’s important.

Side Note: The good people over at the Omidyar Network are backing DonorsChoose. If you weren’t convinced of the quality of this program already that should do it for you.