The Donors Choose organization deserves your support

CNN's Aaron Brown presented a TV segment about a wonderful organization that provides assistance to schools in several states.

http://donorschoose.org/

DonorsChooseSM was pioneered by teachers at a Bronx public high school who were compelled by three problems:

Disparities in public school funding and the typically unmet needs of students from low-income families.

Teachers' lack of influence over the purchase of student materials, even as many spent their own money to buy basics like paper and pens.
Teachers' untapped potential for educational innovation in and out of the classroom.

Charles Best, a social studies teacher at the high school, Wings Academy, believed that contributors to charity also had an untapped potential and a lack of influence on the use of their donations. He conceived a new form of citizen philanthropy where teachers could easily develop projects in need of funding, and where civic-minded individuals could choose a proposal they wanted to fund.

In the spring of 2000, he asked colleagues to access a newly created website and to propose projects that would delight and benefit their students. Ten teachers proposed everything from "SAT Review Books for my English Class" to "Baby Think-It-Over-Doll for Pregnancy Unit."

The trial run indicated that if invited, teachers would propose imaginative projects, and that if those proposals were funded, students would provide vivid feedback. "I never had a donor before," wrote one student. "You must be a nice person." Another student stated, "I don't get that many books, this one is probably my third. So it is something I will hold on to for a long time."

During the 2000-2001 school year, with the help of students and friends, Charles made DonorsChoose fully operational and invited teachers from across the city to submit proposals. As of September of 2002, hundreds of proposals have been submitted, citizens from 28 states have donated, and the model has been hailed as the "charity of the future."