DonorsChoose: open source philanthropy from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Social Media Challenge is a leading example of micro-giving

When you think of organizations and nonprofits that have made effective use of Web 2.0 technologies to raise funds for a cause, DonorsChoose.org should be near the top of a very short list.

And October is once again the month when bloggers step up to the plate for the Social Media Challenge, now in its third year. Last year, bloggers big and small raised $270,000 to provide 65,000 students with the resources needed to learn. This year, Twitter has joined the fray.

At Socialbrite, we’d like to call on our readers to support students in public school classrooms in low-income areas. The cool part? You get to decide which projects to support — and you’ll be able to hear directly from the students who received your donation.

Please make a donation on the Socialbrite Giving Page. Some of the donations will have twice the impact because of a matching grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

And, of course, you can always create your own Giving Page.

Meantime, if you’re not familiar with DonorsChoose, the idea is a simple one: It’s a site where public school teachers could post what materials they were lacking in the classroom. Requests stay up for five months or until they’re fully funded.

Interview with founder Charles Best

I recently buttonholed founder and CEO Charles Best to get a first-hand account of the groundbreaking charity and its model for funding public school projects around the country. Charles thought up the site during a lunch conversation with colleagues at a public high school in the Bronx where he was a social studies teacher for five years, and his students volunteered to help start the organization. They hope individuals will contribute around $17 million this year for books, field trips, art supplies and technology needed by classrooms in low-income areas.

Watch, embed or download the 6-minute video on Vimeo
Watch the video in H.264 on Ourmedia

Some highlights from our chat:

• During the 2007 Blogger Challenge, he said, “we saw that a handful of bloggers who wouldn’t appear on the Technorati top 100 list and don’ have huge readerships were actually capable of raising the most money from their readers because they have a personal relationship with their followers.”

• With micro-giving, “someone with $10 or $25 to give can be a philanthropist. and get the same kind of accountability and vivid feedback that bill gates gets when he gives $1 million,” he said.

• The main reason it works is that you get to see how your donation was spent, you get photos from the classroom, and you get a personal reply from the teacher or students.

• There are 12,000 to 14,000 classroom project requests on the site at a time. About two-thirds get fully funded before they hit their expiration date.

• DonorsChoose is a great target for companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility programs. “Companies have a new ability to empower their customers to be philanthropists, to open source their philanthropy and let their customers or employees participate as grant makers,” he said.

• Long term, DonorsChoose wants raise $100 million a year for public classrooms this way.

About DonorsChoose.org

DonorsChoose.org grew out of a high school in the Bronx where teachers saw their students going without the materials needed to learn.  Our website provides an easy way for everyday people to address this problem. Public school teachers post project requests that range from a $100 classroom library, to a $600 digital projector, to a $1,000 trip to the zoo. People like you can choose which projects to fund and then get photos and thank-you letters from the classroom.

I wanted to take a minute to catch you up on my challenge progress.

Day 3 (Nov. 1)

Last week as a big one in our house (flat, actually).  I had a long list of items left on my to-do list and I expected, Friday night, to be working on them for a good chunk of Saturday.  As many of you have experienced yourselves, I’m sure, it can be pretty easy for people like us who are passionate about what they do, excited to get involved, and happy to help to get over-committed.  Or, at least, have too many items on the to-do list.  Since moving here in September, it has been a personal goal of mine to avoid establishing a pattern of work-aholicism, but I haven’t kept the goal front-and-center.  So, Saturday, I decided to give time and attention.

I gave up my whole day to whatever ELSE there was besides work.  I didn’t get online at all.  Instead, I spent time with my husband and our friend, ‘vegged out’ to some old episodes of The Office, and went to a play at the Hampstead Theatre.  It sounds very silly and selfish, but it felt great to push aside the laptop and give a full day to people and things that I love.

Day 4 (Nov. 2)

Sunday, I was browsing through my RSS feed, reading news and stories, not expecting to come upon a wonderful gift.  But I did!

Dining for Women is a nonprofit organization that I really like:

Dining for Women is a dinner giving circle. We “dine in” together once a month, each bringing a dish to share, and our “dining out” dollars are sent to international programs empowering women.

Through support of international grass-roots programs in education, healthcare, vocational training, micro-credit loans and economic development, and through our members’ combined donations, we encourage women to believe they can improve their living situations.

Education is an integral part of our mission. DFW believes that through education, our members become agents of change, capable of altering the face of world poverty.

As a new fundraising mechanism, DFW is offering beautiful charity boxes with the organization’s logo on them.  “This project was conceived and designed exclusively for DFW by the Ithaca chapter– for the nationwide DFW membership. It is a collaboration with The Zanger Company (Gloria Smith), importer of Polish Stoneware, and the women of the Ceramika Artystyczna Factory in Poland.”

I purchased a charity box for my mother – the person who first taught me about giving.  I can’t wait for it to arrive to her door!

Day 5 (Nov. 3)

Yesterday, I received an email from DonorsChoose.org wrapping up the Bloggers Challenge from last month.  I clicked through to my account and decided to check in on projects I had selected.  Many were fully-funded and the campaigns were thus closed.  The project I donated to during the challenge, was still in need, though.  So, I decided to give again.

Why?  The project is something very close to home for me – digital storytelling.  Right now, I’m in the middle of quite a few conversations, idea-sharing, and email exchanges discussing the use of video and storytelling for organizations, conferences, and more.  The power of a video, a message coming directly from those being served, is incredible.  And in this proposal from a teacher in South Carolina, we can help a classroom of elementary school students start telling stories digitally, too.  Check it out – and if you are able, help them out!

Day 6 (Nov. 4)

Today, Tuesday, November 4, 2008, is the US Election.  GO VOTE!

What did I give today?  I gave my voice, my political contribution, my commitment to the future.  Voting is the easiest, truest way to show patriotism.  Participating in the process is the best way to start engaging with your neighbors, your community, your country.

I actually already voted, because I had to mail the ballot a while ago to ensure it made it from London in time.  But today I am using all the powers I have to get out the vote.  Giving away my Facebook status to my time.

This is one of the most important elections you will probably ever participate in given the current issues facing our country and the timeline we require for answers and action.  I, obviously, would love to have the candidate I voted for take office in January.  But today, that isn’t what is most important to me: I just want you to vote.  Please.

Find your local polling place here.  Find out if there are any voting reports from your area or report with Twitter Vote Report here.

I browse through the many projects on the DonorsChoose.org website, take the time to select ones I think you all would like to support (as I explained in an earlier post, I’m selecting projects that focus on technology in the classroom), and add them to the challenge page.  But, by the time I come to blog about the challenge or encourage donations about a specific project added to the list, they are already funded!  This is great news, that so many projects are successfully reaching their funding goals, but it does make it difficult to inspire donations from readers!

The Bloggers Challenge widget is in my sidebar, so that readers who come to the site, any time, can see the challenge information and participate.  But, it isn’t very compelling to donate any amount of money when the highlighted project is fully funded already.

I have edited, refreshed, and selected new projects for the challenge many times this month, but the same thing keeps happening.  Now, I’m certainly not mad or frustrated.  Quite the opposite – I’m thrilled to know that so many projects I found insteresting and deserving of the spotlight have been funded!  That’s the goal of the challenge, right?

Here’s my question, and I do hope you’ll weigh in: How could I do a better job in the future of 1. inspiring you to participate and 2. keeping up with the ferocious turn over of funded projects?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts!  And, if you have a minute and five dollars, here’s a great project that you can help support!

I teach kindergarten in a low income neighborhood. My students do not have a lot of parental support at home. I have to provide for all their education needs.

I am currently allowing my students to use my big CD player to listen to books on CD. The problem with that is the whole class has to listen to the book being read. It becomes very distracting for some and the noise level makes it difficult for me to work with small groups. Therefore we are not able to listen to the books very often. Listening is a important part of reading instruction. It allows students to follow along and develop word recognition and fluency.

Being able to provide my students with a kid friendly CD player and headphones would allow them to listen to books independently. The headphones would allow for a quieter classroom which would be appreciated by all.

By supporting this proposal you are providing my students with a kid friendly CD player and headphones. You are also helping my students develop fluency and the word recognition that is important in learning to read.

My students need a CD player and 4 headphones to use in the listening center. The cost of this proposal is $160, which includes shipping for any materials requested and fullfilment.

Help support the Bloggers Challenge and this great project!

Thanks so much for your ideas, thoughts, and participation!

Last year, the BloggersChallenge raised $500,000 through the help of nearly 50 bloggers!  I’m excited to see the impact we can make for classrooms looking to use technology in the way they learn, share, and collaborate together.

Why Technology?

I use technology every day, and can’t really function effectively without much of it.  Just think about the impact simple tools like a digital camera or headphones make on the way we are able to share with my family, friends and colleagues on a daily basis by sharing photos or using the internet to make a call and connect personally—don’t you want those simple tools available in classrooms?  I’ve selected proposals from teachers integrating technology into their classrooms to make learning exciting and effective.

Why DonorsChoose?

DonorsChoose.org is an organization and an idea that I really like: the simplicity and the purpose.  Connecting teachers directly with people who could help them in their classroom, whether they are interested because they share a geography, a subject matter, or just an awesome idea for igniting learning in students.  I also added the DonorsChoose recommended actions from Social Actions earlier this summer.

What can I do?

Please participate this month in the BloggersChallenge, here’s how you can get going now:

1. Support classroom projects by donating!
2. Find more projects you think should be added to our Challenge, just put a link in the comments and I can add them to our challenge page!
3. Send this link to others to participate and donate!

I’m excited to tackle this challenge together.  Let’s make a difference in classrooms across the US!