Back in 2000, Charles Best was a young high school teacher in New York City. When he didn’t have enough money to purchase enough copies of a book he wanted his class to read—and realized many of his colleagues were in the same boat—an idea was born. He launched the website DonorsChoose.org as an effort to connect teachers who needed materials and people who could help pay for them. Now public school teachers from around the country can go to the site and post project requests, and donors can select which ones they’d like to give money to. The concept caught on, serving as a pioneering example in the world of crowdfunding we’re familiar with today.
At the beginning of a new school year, we asked Best to share his charity’s mission and offer some thoughts on the current state of public education funding.
What compelled you to found DonorsChoose.org?
I started DonorsChoose.org as a teacher in the Bronx, where I saw firsthand that all schools are not created equal. When I was in high school, we went on field trips into the woods, we had graphing calculators for trigonometry, we had the supplies to do just about any art project. Yet, as a teacher, my colleagues and I would spend a lot of our own money on copy paper and pencils, and often we couldn’t get the resources that would excite our students about learning. We’d talk in the teachers’ lunchroom about books our students should read, a field trip we wanted to take them on, a microscope that would bring science to life. I figured there must be people out there who’d want to help teachers like us if they could see where their money was going. Crowdfunding wasn’t even a word when we started DonorsChoose.org, and my students and I had no idea that it would become a global movement.
How has the charity grown since then?
I launched DonorsChoose.org while I was still teaching, and my students helped get it off the ground. In 2007, we expanded to serve all public schools across the country. Since then, 76% of public schools in the United States have at least one teacher who has posted a classroom request on our site, and we’ve raised more than $550 million to fund more than 940,000 classroom requests in 75,000 public schools across the country. Just this past school year, we raised $123 million for projects on our site.
Do you have an idea of how many teachers in the U.S. are forced to purchase books and supplies out of their own pockets?
It’s a common experience for almost every teacher. Several studies and surveys have found that teachers spend an average of $500 of their own money on school supplies for their students every year. Many of the teachers we talk to say they spend even more. Teachers often aren’t making the salaries they deserve in the first place, so we hope DonorsChoose.org is a way teachers can get the materials they need without having to reach into their own pockets.
Are you helping more people now because more people know about you, or because there is more of a need? Maybe it’s both?
It is a bit of both. Teacher word of mouth is one of our best ways to recruit new teachers, because nothing generates more buzz than a bunch of DonorsChoose.org boxes showing up in the school office when a project gets delivered. When budgets tighten, teachers have to find creative ways to stock their classrooms, but we also see plenty of teachers who simply want to try something new or add some extra innovation to the classroom.
Has the charity’s mission evolved over time?
Since 2000, we’ve stayed focused on equipping teachers with the tools and experiences they need to give their students a great education, but we’ve explored different ways of achieving that. For example, in 2015, we added a new project type to our site called Student-led Projects: traditional projects on our site are posted by teachers requesting materials for their students; Student-led Projects empower students to dream up an idea of something they’d like to work on, and partner with their teachers to post it on DonorsChoose.org. We’ve also expanded to support professional development needs for teachers. And, earlier this year, we created a new project type called Student Life Essentials for teachers requesting basic life needs for their students, including food for students to take home for the weekend, winter jackets, or hygiene products.
Public schools in many areas of the country have traditionally struggled with funding. In our current political climate, there are large federal funding cuts proposed for fiscal year 2018. Does this scenario—not to mention the advent of state budget cuts—put a strain on DonorsChoose.org?
Whenever there are changes to school budgets, we know teachers feel it first. Our team is working harder than ever to ensure we can help as many teachers as possible this school year. Last school year, we raised more than $120 million, about half of which came from citizen donors giving to projects directly through the site. The other half came from our corporate and foundations partnerships—organizations and companies like Google, Target, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which support thousands of projects every year through matching gifts and other methods. This year, we’re hoping to raise more than $130 million, and we know that every dollar matters to our teachers.
How do you and your team vet a project request?
We have about 230 teacher volunteers who vet every project request before it’s posted. These volunteers are all avid users of our site, which means they’re best equipped to help our teachers post compelling projects. They review each project to ensure that the donor can understand the need and verify that the items the teacher has requested match the description in the project.
Do you envision a day when teachers will no longer need to request funding from DonorsChoose.org? What will it take to get there?
I’d love DonorsChoose.org to become a place where teachers can post innovative, out-of-the-box projects that they can’t get funding for traditionally. Right now, we’re seeing project requests for both basic resources like pencils and paper and dream projects requesting things like 3-D printers, field trips, and therapy dogs for autistic students. Ideally, DonorsChoose.org wouldn’t be necessary for basic supplies, but I hope we’ll always be a platform for teachers to request resources that would bring the learning experience of their students to the next level.
How do you remain hopeful about the viability of public schools when your charity basically exists because public schools’ needs are often not being met by the entities that are supposed to fund them?
I find hope from the teachers themselves. No matter the circumstances, teachers show up each day ready to give their students every opportunity possible, and they never give up. These teachers are resourceful and determined, and we want them to have every tool possible to prepare their students for a bright future.
What is the most rewarding part of running DonorsChoose.org?
Every time a teacher posts their first project on DonorsChoose.org, it’s both the most rewarding part of running our organization, and the most stressful—rewarding because it’s another opportunity to help teachers fulfill their classroom dreams for their students, but stressful because I know these teachers are trusting us and relying on us for help. This fall, our site will likely reach a peak of more than 65,000 projects on the site at one time. That’s a lot of teachers who are counting on us. But every funded project means an extra glimmer of opportunity for students across the country.
