Donors Choose

Donors Choose is a United States nonprofit organization that allows individuals to donate to schools for classroom projects. This organization enables teachers to request materials and resources for their classrooms and the donors make these requests more of a possibility of it being complete.

“Together they've given $403,118,086 in classroom project funding”

Donors can donate a dollar or more to these projects that have caught their interests. These projects can be searched by grade, teacher's name, location, school name, school subject and keywords. Once the request is complete, the organization purchases the requested material or resource and ships them directly to the school. Each project has its line-item budget and a small description of the project.

When the teacher's request is complete, all donors are sent a thank you letter and photographs of the project of the class by the teacher. Donors who give $50 dollars or more to the project, they receive thank you notes from students.

“Making classrooms more engaging for 17,756,771 students across the country”

The founder of this organization was a history teacher at a Bronx public high school named Charles Best. Charles wanted his students to read Little House on the Prairie. While he was doing photocopies of the one book, he thought about the money being spent on books, supplies and other materials. He assumed there were people out there that are willing to help. He sketched out a website where teachers can post classroom project requests, and donors choose the ones that catches their interests. His colleagues posted the first 11 requests. After time, it spread. Today, they are opened to any public school in America.

“Today, teachers at 69% of public schools in America have posted a project on our site.”

There are teachers here at Carolina High School that have signed up to the website to request fundings for their students needs. Most teachers use their own money to provide for their students materials to complete assignments, however Donors Choose has helped them to receive these expensive materials.

Mrs. Tovornik, an English and Theatre teacher, requested and received class sets of “Catcher in the Rye” and “Dante’s Inferno.” These two requests were over $160 each.

Mrs. Dickerson, the JV cheer coach, requested and received mats for the cheerleaders which was about $1,000.

Mr. Brittain, an English teacher and the head Soccer coach, requested soccer balls for the school's soccer team and books for his class and received both. Last year, as well as this year, he received over $1,800 worth of materials.

As of now, there are no teachers at Carolina High School who have projects needing funds, but there are other Greenville County teachers out there who do. If you are interested in donating, all funds given are tax deductible.