Remember this organization I talked about in How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist – Donorschoose.org?
Public schools are struggling more and more to come up with the money for basic classroom supplies, and teachers often have to purchase essentials using their own money. DonorsChoose.org helps fill this gap in a very simple way. Teachers post requests online (all requests are verified by the site) for items they and their students desperately need. You choose a project and the amount you would like to give. DonorsChoose.org then distributes the supplies and makes sure each donor receives photos and thank-you notes from the students.

Well, it gets even better!

This weekend online education charity DonorsChoose.org and the Pershing Square Foundation are teaming up to offer a Presidents’ Day Sale worth caring about.

Every project request submitted by a public school teacher at DonorsChoose.org that supports American History or Civics will be discounted to within $100 of completion. Everyday citizens will be challenged to complete the funding for discounted projects, which primarily serve high poverty classrooms, before the offer expires. This philanthropic sale starts on Thursday, February 11, and runs through Monday, February 15.


The Presidents’ Day offer is the first in a new series called “Almost Home,” made possible by a $1 million grant from the Pershing Square Foundation. Over the next four months, funding will be implemented as five site-wide “Almost Home” offers, each pegged to a specific theme day. For a limited time each month, “citizen philanthropists” will be challenged to activate matching funds from the Pershing Square Foundation by completing the funding on classroom projects meeting the theme day’s criteria.


Here’s how the “Almost Home” series will work this Presidents’ Day Weekend: each qualifying project will display a specialized logo that is easily identifiable to donors looking to maximize their impact on students at a low personal cost. As with any project request at DonorsChoose.org, donors can contribute any dollar amount to classroom projects during each “Almost Home” campaign. Once a project is completely funded, DonorsChoose.org will purchase the requested materials and send them directly to the classroom. Donors will hear back from them classroom they supported in the form of photographs and student thank-you letters.


Classroom project requests that support Civics and American History will come from public and charter schools in all 50 states over Presidents’ Day Weekend and range from a New York City classroom in need of a computer to compete in a nationwide history contest, to a classroom in Los Angeles that needs reading supplies to teach eager first generation Americans about U.S. History.


About DonorsChoose.org
Founded in 2000, DonorsChoose.org is a nonprofit website where public school teachers describe specific educational projects for their students, and donors can choose the projects they want to support. After completing a project, the donor hears back from the classroom they supported in the form of photographs and student thank-you letters.


To date, 118,000 public and charter school teachers have used the site to secure funding for $45 million in books, art supplies, technology, and other resources that their students need to learn. Through http://www.donorschoose.org/ individuals from all walks of life have helped 2.8 million students from low-income families.




About Pershing Square Foundation
Founded in December 2006 by William Ackman, The Pershing Square Foundation has made donations and pledges of approximately $40 million since its inception. Areas of support include, closing the achievement gap in education, global health care, human rights, poverty alleviation and the arts, with a focus on social enterprise as a vehicle of delivery.