October 3, 2002 | Read Time: 3 minutes
A New York charity is using the Internet to carry out its motto: “Every teacher a grant writer, every citizen a philanthropist.” DonorsChoose’s Web site matches donors with public-school teachers who have innovative ideas for student projects that aren’t covered by school funds.
Charles Best, a social-studies teacher at Wings Academy, an alternative public high school in the Bronx, founded DonorsChoose in spring 2000. New York City public-school teachers can submit proposals for class trips and projects through the organization’s Web site. DonorsChoose volunteers verify that the person making the request is a teacher, review the proposal, ask clarifying questions about anything that is unclear in the proposal, and, if possible, negotiate a discount for the supplies or admission charges that the teacher has requested. Then the organization posts the proposal on its Web site for donors to browse.
Among the teachers’ requests: a Baby-Think-It-Over doll for use during a pregnancy and child-rearing unit, SAT review books for an English class, and funds to bring a runaway slave from Mauritania to speak to a history class that had read an article about the man’s story.
Since the organization was started, donors in 28 states have given $145,000, financing 260 proposals.
DonorsChoose purchases all supplies and services; no money goes directly to the teachers. Donors receive photographs of the students completing the project or taking the trip, thank-you notes from the students and their teachers, and a receipt for the cost of the trip or supplies.
Mr. Best got DonorsChoose started by making dessert for his teaching colleagues, on the condition that if they indulged, they would submit a proposal for a project they would like to do with their classes.
He says that the idea behind DonorsChoose is simple: “It’s committed teachers who know their kids’ needs better than anyone else in the system, so we ought to be tapping their imagination and their expertise to design student projects that are going to be of great benefit and enjoyment for students.”
And, he says, just as teachers often aren’t in charge of purchasing student materials, donors seldom have control over how charities use their contributions.
“I assumed that writing a check, mailing it to an organization, getting a glossy annual report, and going to a charity ball just isn’t a fulfilling experience,” says Mr. Best. “I thought that it would be great if we could create a new model of citizen philanthropy where even somebody who only had $50 to give could go and act as a foundation.”
Since he started DonorsChoose, Mr. Best has spent most of his teacher’s salary to get the organization off the ground. Recently, though, the organization has received a $100,000 grant from the AOL Time Warner Foundation and a $100,000 grant from the Goldman Sachs Foundation. The grants have allowed the organization to hire a full-time operations director and enabled Mr. Best to reduce his teaching load by half.
When donors pay for a project, they are offered the option of adding 10 percent toward DonorsChoose’s administrative costs. So far, more than 60 percent of donors have opted to add the surcharge. Mr. Best hopes that in time the surcharge will allow the organization to be largely self-sustaining.
Teachers, businesspeople, and school administrators in other cities have contacted DonorsChoose about creating similar programs. The group is starting a membership program that will allow local sponsors to underwrite expansion into those communities.
For groups interested in starting independent programs using the DonorsChoose model, the organization plans to license its Internet technology. Fees will be set on a sliding scale based on the size of the city’s school population and the percentage of students who are from poor families. The money from the licensing fees will pay for upgrades of the Web-site technology, and will support an umbrella organization, Network for Citizen Philanthropy, for the groups.
The first of these new groups, Means for Dreams, plans to start a site next month to benefit District of Columbia schools.
To get there: Go to http://www.donorschoose.org.
