DonorsChoose.org

A few years ago when I was at Hixson Middle School in Webster Groves, MO (before the move to Florida) my teaching partner, Melissa Hellwig, and I discovered donorschoose.org. It was a new entity that paired those who wanted to donate to public education classrooms with those classrooms in need. Individuals and businesses could donate to a specific classroom and support a particular teacher or classroom program. The benefactor could see exactly where their money was going. Businesses also could set up a funding source and give to classrooms that satisfied certain conditions (like STEM projects, art projects, etc.). During my last 3-4 years at Hixson, we wrote grants for a class set of Chromebooks, a dozen Kindles, a 3D printer, 3D doodle pens, and a trip for our entire school of 700 to see "He Named Me Malala". We wrote nine or ten successful grants. It was amazing.

Since moving to Florida and starting at East Naples Middle School, I have not written any grants through donorschoose.org. Our district has its own grant system and so I applied for three different grants through our district grant site. None have been funded. Oh well, there is only so much money to go around. But then a week ago, I received an email from donorschoose.org telling me that the Dick's Sporting Goods Foundation was fully funding grants for athletics programs in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. Those were the three states affected by hurricanes this fall and Dick's wanted to help schools in those states rebuild their athletics programs. Well, I don't have to be told twice to apply for a grant that will be fully funded.

I got in touch with our Phys Ed teachers and our after-school athletics program coordinator and they put together a list of our needs. Since I already had an up-and-running donorschoose.org account, I wrote the grant for our school needs based on their lists. Two days after posting our grant, it was funded. We were all blown away. Amazing! After the grant was funded, I got an email from a staff member at donorschoose.org telling me that if we needed more, I should submit another grant proposal. They also said to share the email so that other schools could benefit. I contacted my colleagues and we put together another grant proposal. It's funny, all of my colleagues were worried about "asking for too much". Teachers are trained to ask for nothing and feel guilty when they ask for anything. It's in our DNA. After overcoming our reservations, we submitted another grant for more equipment, things that we need but were too afraid to ask for in the first grant. I just submitted that grant two days ago and we're waiting to hear if it gets approved. We are crossing our fingers. Update: We got the second grant too!

Donorschoose.org is an amazing organization that gives businesses that want to donate to public education a chance to do so the way they want to. Companies don't have to throw money out there hoping that schools will use it for its intended purposes. They can put criteria on the grant and make sure that it is going exactly where they want it to go. When these funding opportunities come up, donorschoose.org is great about getting the word out. Savvy teachers all over the country know to act as soon as they are notified. Dick's Sporting Goods Foundation put up 1.5 million dollars to help schools recover from hurricanes (in our case, Irma). That money will positively affect the lives of millions and millions of kiddos. Donorschoose.org made it all happen.