“You cannot control the world, the country, your town, the mood swings of those you love, but you can try to create around you a little bit of space that is all your own.” Sharon Salzberg

We, as teachers, all work hard to create classrooms that are special, comforting, inspiring and places we all look forward to going to each day. We want our students to feel like our classrooms are homes away from home and as if we are all part of a special family while we are learning and collaborating throughout the year.

Often times we have visions and ideas which although are practical and will impact the learning of students, are not possible due to lack of funding through school budgets, and really hard for us as teachers to pay for everything out of our own pockets.

This is where DonorsChoose comes in. It’s really easy to start an account for your classroom. You have the opportunity to post a picture that best represents your students and to write a short paragraph to describe your students and the things that make them special.

After that, you will create a project. The DonorsChoose site is linked to several awesome educational vendors which you can choose supplies from. You will shop as if you are shopping online and your items will be transferred to your project.

You will then write a few paragraphs describing how you will use the items and how the learning of your students will be impacted by having the chosen materials. The last step is to create a title for your project.

It’s really as simple as that and once you submit your project the team at DonorsChoose will review it and post it on the site. That’s when it becomes a live link and people from all over the country will be able to see it and hopefully choose it to donate to!

Many teachers post their project links on Twitter, Facebook, their Instagram profile and even the Next Door app. This is not necessary but definitely helpful because their are people and companies who will look to social media for causes to support and certain projects might catch the attention of others interested in the same field.

DonorsChoose has its own large group of partners who regularly choose projects to partially or fully fund such as Google, Sonic Drive-In, The Craig Newmark Foundation, Horace Mann, and The Charles Schwab Foundation. Sometimes they will provide a match offer on specific types of projects.

I’ve been fortunate to receive matched donations from Charles Schwab for financial literacy projects, Google and Sonic for flexible seating, and The Craig Newark Foundation has been incredibly generous in bringing STEM, integrated art, and many different types of books to my classroom throughout the past two years.

Once your project is funded you will have the awesome opportunity to show the donors how your project has impacted your students by sharing six pictures and writing an impact statement. This is a few paragraphs explaining how the item or items have made a difference in your classroom.

Many donors look forward to seeing the items and will also request thank you cards. My students always love creating cards for the donors and even if the donors don’t request thank you cards I have the students create messages to photograph and submit on the project site. For example there was one project I had for flexible seating and there were over eight donors but only one of them requested thank you cards. I had the children make little thank you posters and they held each one up as I took their pictures on the various types of seating from the project. These pictures were posted on the site and each donor received an email notification that we received the items and saw our pictures.

Thanks to DonorsChoose we have even been able to cook in the classroom!

The great thing about DonorsChoose as a donor is that you can choose exactly where your money is going and immediately see it in action. You can give as little as a dollar to help a project and you would be amazed at how many people do this and how quickly it all adds up! Many times teachers give to each other’s projects because we all know how it is to need things for our classrooms and know that even a little bit helps.

If you are a teacher, go ahead and sign up here and let me know if you need any help at all creating or attracting attention to your project.

If you are not a teacher but would like to help one out, go ahead and search the site here. You can look for specific schools, teachers, grade levels, or subjects. You can be assured that a donation to DonorsChoose is tax-deductible and very much appreciated!

Thank you so much for your time and attention! I hope you found this post worthwhile and please feel free to reach out to me for any additional support or questions. I’d love to connect further.

Happy Teaching and Happy Helping a Teacher!

Yours truly,

Jennifer