Learn Tips and Tricks for Donors Choose

Hello from sunny Arizona! This is Jamie from Diary of a Not So Wimpy Teacher. I am over-the-moon excited to be a collaborator on this blog.

Let me start my telling you a little about myself. I have been teaching third grade for three years. I am not the person who knew since she was a little girl that she wanted to be a teacher. Nope! In fact, I have a degree in American Political Studies. I worked as a lobbyist for the Arizona State Supreme Court. It was my dream job. But all of my priorities and goals changed when I became a mom. In just two and a half years, my husband and I had four kids. No joke! (There was a set of twins in there!) I had the wonderful opportunity to stay home with our babies.

By the time all of my kids were in school, I was a completely changed person. I could not imagine a job that did not involve children. I got my secondary teaching license and student taught in a 12th grade American Government class. I liked it...but I hated that the young adults had lost their innocence. I knew I needed to spend my days with the little guys. I did all the necessary classes and tests and have been in third grade ever since. I can't imagine doing anything else.

Now let's talk about Donors Choose. I have been using Donors Choose to buy materials for my classroom since my first year teaching. I learned about it on an episode of Oprah! It is such an amazing organization and I just assumed that every teacher knew about it. And then I realized that only a handful of teachers at my school had ever used it! And every time that I mention it on my blog or FB page, I get tons of questions. So here are some tips and tricks that I have learned along the way...

Donors Choose is a nonprofit website that allows public school teachers to request donations for their classroom. Individuals and businesses come to the site looking for projects to donate money towards. The donations are tax deductible. In short, Donors Choose makes it possible for public school teachers to make requests for their classroom and perfect strangers can help make these dreams become a reality for students. Your classroom gets the materials that they need. Donors receive a tax write off and beautiful thank you notes from your students. It almost sounds too good to be true. But trust me, it is very true! In the past two years, I have had ten different projects funded through Donors Choose!

Seriously, if wishes were fishes, what resources would you want in your classroom? Chances are, you can make a Donors Choose project for it! Do you need more technology? You can ask for iPads, chrome books, printers, etc. Do you need math manipulatives? You can make a project by shopping the Lakeshore math maniulatives! Have you always wanted to have book clubs, but don't have the books? Book projects fund faster than most! Has your school cancelled field trips due to budget cuts? You can get a field trip funded through Donors Choose. They are even allowing projects for professional development! If you can dream it....Donors Choose can help make it happen. (Honestly, I don't work for them!)

Writing a Donors Choose project is fun for the online shopping enthusiast! Donors Choose has teamed up with a plethora of vendors, including Amazon, Best Buy and Lakeshore Learning. You just shop these vendors for the materials that you need for your classroom. Add them to your cart and write a description with the prompts that Donors Choose provides. Give the project a fun name and you are done! It took me about an hour to write my first project and now I can write them in about 30 minutes. The project is approved and added to the site within a day or two.

Did you know that their are tons of businesses that have already agreed to partner in the funding of projects that meet a set criteria? All you have to do is write the project that meets this criteria! I got an awesome color printer this way! I discovered that Epson had a partner offer last spring. I wrote a project for the printer and was certain to include the Epson name in the project title (per the instructions for their partner deal). Epson immediately funded half of my project. The other half was quickly funded by other private donors. Within a month of writing the project, I was printing beautiful color task cards with my new free-to-me printer!

A little research can go a long way in getting fantastic projects funded quickly. Here is how to find the partner deals:

• Log in to your Donors Choose account.
• Click on your name on the upper right-hand corner.
• Click on "Projects."
• On the left-hand side of the screen, you will see a blue hyperlink that says "Partner Funding Opportunities."
• Search for funding opportunities by clicking on your state.
• Carefully read the details to make sure that your project will meet the criteria.
• Create your project!

If you don't see a partner funding opportunity that you can use, check back again in a month. The opportunities are always changing! Write a reminder in your planner for each month, so that you don't miss out on a great opportunity.

So you want eight iPads? Yes, you can ask for that, but I am going to offer a suggestion. I recommend breaking up large projects into multiple small projects. Consider asking for just one iPad at a time. Projects that are under $500 are more likely to fund than projects that cost more. Donors want to give to a project that they feel is likely to fund. So keep the projects small. After you fund one project, you can always start another! It will take some time, but it is possible!

At the time of writing, Donors Choose has a match offer for the first week of a project. If donors use the promotional code SPARK, a private donor will match their donation. This is HUGE! It essentially cuts your need in half. It is so important to advertise and ask for donations during that first week. Make sure they know about the promotional code.

Each teacher is only allowed to have projects with SPARK match offers twice per school year. If you only do a couple of projects per year, then this will not be a problem. If you do more projects, you will want to use it on projects you need funded fast or projects that cost more than others.

I used the Spark donation to get a fun Lego project funded in just one week!

You don't HAVE to ask anyone you know to contribute to your project. You can wait for perfect strangers to find your project. But, I don't recommend that! It takes A LOT longer! Your friends and family are usually very happy to help your classroom. You don't have to be as pushy as a used car salesman! Just post a link to your project on Facebook and politely ask for support. Then do it again a few days later. Due to the way Facebook works, many of your friends and family probably never saw your first request.

How about asking your students' parents? Stick your project request in your classroom newsletter. Or make the link to the project part of your signature on your email. On my last project, two parents donated right away and helped me to get the project funded in just one week!

Please don't get discouraged if it takes a while to get your project funded! Some of mine took three months. But they all funded. Be patient and keep asking!

Donors Choose features several projects right on their home page. These projects will get funded quickly by perfect strangers. It is the first thing they see when they go to the site. So how can you get your project featured? The featured projects are projects that have the most donors. Not the most donations- but the most donors. Can you get everyone at your husband's office to donate $1? Can you get your own coworkers to donate $1? It might not seem like much, but if you get enough donors, you might see your project featured on the homepage! Plus, it all adds up! Especially if you are getting a Spark match! I always get my projects started by donating to them myself!

There have been several different Donors Choose giving pages that have popped up over the last couple of years. I highly recommend that you follow Laura Candler's Caring Classrooms Facebook page. This group is sensational! They helped me to get two different math manipulative projects funded super quick!

You need to go to her page to read all of the specifics, but here is the general gist: Caring Classrooms keeps 10 Donors Choose projects featured on their giving page. Each Sunday, they request donations to these pages in what they call Fund-Day Sunday. Throughout the day teachers will donate $1 or more to these featured projects. As the projects get completely funded, Caring Classrooms will add new projects. If you donated to a project during Fund-Day Sunday,  they will consider  your Donors Choose project as one of their featured projects. If you get picked, your project is guaranteed to fund quickly! Mine funded within 1-2 weeks after getting chosen! AND, I felt great knowing that I had donated a few dollars to help another teach get her project funded. WIN! WIN! Don't be discouraged if you don't get picked the first week or two that you try. They keep records of all donations and they do a great job of rewarding regular donors.

Good luck with your Donors Choose projects! What will you be asking for? We would love to know, just leave us a comment.

Have a fantastic week!