Mixed Feelings About Donors Choose

Much as I love Linda Erlinger and the rest of the Donors Choose gang, I must admit to having mixed feelings about the approach, which basically matches potential donors and classroom teachers' needs online:  You want to have more books about the forest in your room?  I want to pay for that.  Done. 

Like they say, it's simple, direct, and concrete -- and apparently very popular.  There's no big application process for the teachers.  And no big learning curve for the donors.

So I'm not sure what gets me.  Is it that their promo program (now including Claire Danes as their pitchwoman) is pretty aggressive?  Is it that the program competes with other, more established local programs like Rochelle Lee and the Oppenheimer grants that have a more traditional application and approval process.  Is it that the approach is so individualized, so intentionally un-systematic and Web 2.0 that I can't deal with it?  I honestly don't know.

What I'd like to know is whether the things people get via Donors Choose are what they really need, or whether teachers mostly ask for what they can get?  Any stories, good or bad, about the experience -- as a donor or as a teacher? 

Comments

Rochelle Lee and Oppenheimer are like visit to an historical museum. By the time you wipe away the cobwebs, you forgot what you wanted to do with your grant. Donors Forum appears to be a great use of the Internet and I am glad it is finally getting some play here in Chicago.

Shame on you, Alexander! Of all the things in the education world to twist with your cynicism, DonorsChoose?! Here you have an organization started by a teacher with the sole purpose of helping other teachers get what they need so that they can teach children! Donors can fund at small levels $10, $25 or large levels- $1,000+. This gives everyone an opportunity to be a philanthropist- those with big $ and those with limited funds. And teachers can get what they need to be effective. When I taught I spent annually about $3,000-$5,000 of my own money for supplies (I taught in an inner city, low income neighborhood school.) And with teacher’s salaries being so low- it was a huge blow to my income- but I had to do it to be successful. If I had access to DonorsChoose back then- it would have been a godsend.

I seriously think you should remove that post. It’s ridiculous and really a sad statement for education and this blog- DonorsChoose provides hope. Go pick on something truly controversial.

[Ann]

I cannot imagine anyone having a problem with a NON PROFIT organization who matches deserving students with donors who would like to channel their money into a program that can help teacher's and students attain the materials they need and require to be a more effective teacher!

I have been an award recipient from Donors Choose for over a year now. I have been awarded over 22 grants and I assure you I have asked for and received materials which have only served to improve the quality of education I can offer my students.
When I arrived at my school, there were so little age and developmentally appropiate materials available for me to utilize. Since I "discovered" Donors Choose, I have felt love and support from complete strangers who's only desire it to make a difference right here in our own country.
Thanks to the generosity, and yes an unbelievably easy writing process, I have been able to attain new and innovative products for my Kindergarten students, 2nd language learners, and special education students!
Shame on you for ever poo poohing any organization who has the foresight to try to make a difference in Education! Shame on you for questioning the outcome of this program. I assure you it is honest, helpful, and wonderful!

[Maureen Waters]

The reality is many of our schools lack the funding and direction that is needed to provide our students wiith a quality education. When I came to Richards High School three years ago, my students were reading a textbook that had a copyright year of 1988. My request for new books was denied by the principal due to "limited funds." However, Donors Choose rescued me.
Due to their great staff,I have been awarded many much needed supplies, books, globes, projectors, computers,and so on. If not for them I would be alone in my efforts in trying to reach my students. Donors Choose has directly assisted myself and many other teachers at my school. Donors Choose provides a voice for teachers to be heard.

[Alexander]

i really appreciate the testimonials. the finger-wagging? not so much.

in fact, if you read my post carefully, you'll see that i'm not telling anyone to not give money to teachers via donors choose (i've got their ad in the sidebar to this blog), and i'm not at all questioning the value that teachers feel from participating. i'm certainly not suggesting that there's anything malicious or underhanded about the organization.

however, i wasn't very clear about what my confusion is about. so here are some questions --

-- are the donors choose donations spread out fairly evenly among teachers, or are they concentrated in certain classrooms, schools, or parts of town?

-- does donors choose conduct aggressive outreach to teachers and schools where no one has applied and get them to participate and get help with their projects?

-- does the organization map where its donations go, geographically, across CPS, and share that information?

i'm not for the perfect being the enemy of the good, and there's little doubt that DC is for the good. (ditto for NPN, NLNS, TFA, and all the other folks out there that i've posted about in the past and asked for feedback about.) and of course i want teachers to have everything that they need, no matter where they are. teaching is hard, and schools don't have enough money.

[Allison]

I just happened upon your blog, but I am a huge advocate of Donors Choose. Since you mentioned Rochelle Lee, I'll tell you -- of course it's great, but I wrote (what I thought was) a great proposal and still didn't get the grant. So what do I do? I wrote proposals on Donors Choose for the books I wanted in my classroom and got them. Last year, I also got TWO amazing field trips funded that my school had told me I couldn't ask the students to pay for (problem solved). I have gotten high-interest magazines for my low readers, a great new rug for reading time. These are all things present in high-income schools, but are considered luxuries in the low-income schools many of us teach in and therefore, we must reach outside our school for the funds.

[Allison]

Some answers--
DC doesn't choose which schools/classrooms get the funding - it's up to the individual teachers to put up requests ("proposals")\, which are then funded by anonymous donors. The proposal states what percentage of the teacher's school is low-income (based on free lunch %), and I believe most donations are concentrated in those schools (per donors' requests). So far, DC is mostly word of mouth -- no aggressive outreach at all, I heard about it through teacher friends and spread the word the same way.

[Michael Beyer]

I've be rewarded nearly $10,000 worth of supplies via DonorsChoose. I ask for stuff I both NEED, and stuff I just WANT (i.e., fun stuff that makes the class more interesting, but not necessary for a lesson). I have gotten rave reviews of my classroom from my students and their families, my peers, and my administration. Because of DonorsChoose I have a very exciting, interactive classroom that kids love to be in and learn.

Yes, DonorsChoose is a very simple, basic program, yet I know that most of my fellow teachers in my school haven't even signed up to use it, so it's still not easy enough for some luddites.

I agree with the former reply; most other grant programs are too stuffy and have too many requirements. Each day, after spending 6.5 hours in the classroom and 2-3 hours grading and planning, the last thing I want to do is spend another 2-3 hours a night begging non-profit organizations for help. DonorsChoose is much simpler, direct, refreshing, and rewarding.

[Lindsay]

I can tell you for certain that from DonorsChoose I have received materials I needed, materials I wanted for my students, and then materials and experiences I never even dreamed would be funded. This past summer, one of my 5th graders from Englewood was part of the Second City summer improv. camp, funded by a DonorsChoose grant. Another student from my drama club went to musical theater camp for four weeks. DonorsChoose has yielded dream-come-true materials: a DVD burner so that my drama club can each take home the memories of our show, a hedgehog for our class pet. The funding from DonorsChoose makes my low-resource classroom into an engaging, imaginative, limitless haven that defies the destitution and violence that exists outside its walls.

[Robin Steans]

I've got to say, Mr. Russo, I'm with the crowd here, and I think you've got this wrong. (And I say this as someone who thinks you generally have a good head on your shoulders, based on your reporting.)
As a member of the Donors Choose/Chicago Advisory Board, I can vouch for the fact that DC pays close attention to who is applying and works assiduously to get the word out and keep grants flowing across the city. They track how many proposals are being posted by school and by area, and also follow what percent of these requests are being funded. Linda can chime in and correct me if I'm wrong, but my recollection is that proposal requests and funding levels are nicely spread out around the city. (I pay particularly close attention to a low-income community on the west side, and it's right in there in terms of requests being posted and being funded).
Beyond this, one of the many beautiful things about Donors Choose is that it doesn't compete with other more established programs like Rochelle Lee or Oppenheimer (both of which do terrific work). They don't compete for donors and they don't compete for teachers. Fact is, there's more than enough work and need to go around. More importantly, Donors Choose seems to be tapping into a vast network of individual donors who wouldn't otherwise give at all to schools and classrooms. In other words, Donors Choose is expanding the pie, not cannibalizing other efforts.
As a former classroom teacher, I can attest to how terrific it would have been to have such a straightforward resource available to me back then. As a longtime education funder, I can assure you that having Donors Choose in the mix has not lessened my own interest in other longstanding programs.
I hope you'll consider printing a retraction of your earlier comments. Being good means knowing when you've erred.

[Robin Steans]

I've got to say, Mr. Russo, I'm with the crowd here, and I think you've got this wrong. (And I say this as someone who thinks you generally have a good head on your shoulders, based on your reporting.)
As a member of the Donors Choose/Chicago Advisory Board, I can vouch for the fact that DC pays close attention to who is applying and works assiduously to get the word out and keep grants flowing across the city. They track how many proposals are being posted by school and by area, and also follow what percent of these requests are being funded. Linda can chime in and correct me if I'm wrong, but my recollection is that proposal requests and funding levels are nicely spread out around the city. (I pay particularly close attention to a low-income community on the west side, and it's right in there in terms of requests being posted and being funded).
Beyond this, one of the many beautiful things about Donors Choose is that it doesn't compete with other more established programs like Rochelle Lee or Oppenheimer (both of which do terrific work). They don't compete for donors and they don't compete for teachers. Fact is, there's more than enough work and need to go around. More importantly, Donors Choose seems to be tapping into a vast network of individual donors who wouldn't otherwise give at all to schools and classrooms. In other words, Donors Choose is expanding the pie, not cannibalizing other efforts.
As a former classroom teacher, I can attest to how terrific it would have been to have such a straightforward resource available to me back then. As a longtime education funder, I can assure you that having Donors Choose in the mix has not lessened my own interest in other longstanding programs.
I hope you'll consider printing a retraction of your earlier comments. Being good means knowing when you've erred.

[kelsey]

Donors Choose seriously has changed my life. I spent so much money out of pocket prior to finding it. I also love that my students have to understand that someone who doesn't even know them has donated money and time to make their education better. Learning to be thankful is such an important skill.
I guess I'm not sure why you are upset that there is a celebrity campaign to bring much needed supplies to schools. Is there something wrong with attention finally being brought to the fact that teachers have to spend their own money on supplies as fundamental as pencils?????? Seems like a great thing to me. Also, I am glad not to have to go through a huge application process. I'd rather spend my time grading my students papers, planning new exciting lessons, or just sitting relaxing after a hard day...

none of the posts address Russo's question- are funds distributed evenly across schools or classrooms?
do teachers in some schools ask for more than teachers in other schools?
perhaps the questions should be asked of Donor's Choose.

[kristen]

As a teacher on the south side of Chicago, I am forever in debt to Donors Choose. When I started teaching five years ago, I literally had 25 books in my classroom. Thanks to some very generous donations, I now have over 500 texts, with variuos levels and genres.
Besides the obvious implications the donations have on student learning, the process of responding to the donors has also become an educational tool. My students learn the writing process as they draft, revise, and edit the Thank You letters they write to the donors.
Further, I am a previous recipient of the Oppenheimer grant as well as the Chicago Foundation for Education grant. Yes, the Donors Choose process is less time-consuming but this fact is irrelevant. I need the materials I request no less because of it. Without Donors Choose, I am certain that the hundred students I taught in the past five years would be less successful than they are today.

[Alexander]

ok, from all the new readers and posts clearly someone sent an email out calling for testimonials. which is fine -- it's good to hear that the program is so well-liked by those who have benefitted from it.

so let's stipulate that it's been a great help for those folks. but, as someone pointed about above, that wasn't my point. robin s. gets to it a little bit by describing the distribution of the applications and donations.

Great for Donor's Choose, but then,please tell me why CPS has such a large Office of External Resources and Partnerships? Please tell me they do more than Principal for a Day--(see the salary for THAT postion) and is there any report as to how much $ this department takes in vs how much they expend?
or are they a shill for ren10 and to employ those in the prvt sector who lost their corp jobs?

I'm with Russo. It is important to create some bad publicity for Donors Choose and to make potential Donors think twice before giving money to schools through that program. Maybe we could get the US attorney to say a few things on the subject to really put some planks together for a coffin for this thing. All the testimonials above clearly point to an objective and serious basis for the innuendo Mr. Russo is trying to propagate here. Come on people, there are no free lunches. Let's take Donors Choose down now, BEFORE we find out that there is anything wrong with it. On the other hand, couldn't we apply Russo's argument against Donors Choose to his blog? Shouldn't we leave education reporting to the newspapers--where facts gets checed and some editorial review process theoretically prevents hare-brained recklessness from being published?

[Sars]

I can only speak as a donor -- but I'm a donor who shaved my head to raise 30K for Donors Choose programs, and that 30K came from my readership. They're not particularly well-heeled folk, my readers, and that's why DC is a great choice for them; ten bucks can make a difference, which they can see by following the thermometers on the site, and not only can they tailor their donations to their specific causes/interests, but they also know exactly what it's going towards (i.e. not getting spent on mailings/overhead unless they earmark part of the money for that).

I can't speak to the disbursement, but I've been doing these donation drives for two years now; I've seen the site expand into different communities; I've heard from teachers and children of teachers who participated in my drives that they think it's a genius idea. It's one of the only organizations out there that makes the problem of educational funding shortages something that people without f.u. money can actually do something about.

I'm not really sure what your question is here -- it seems like maybe you're asking if it's too good to be true, if there's some kind of impropriety that allows them to operate the way they do? I don't know.

I do know that I couldn't raise money this way if I had to go through a grants process. Eliminating most of the middlemen in the charitable-giving process is a net positive, at least from where I sit (now breezily coiffed a la Pat Benatar).

Questions, email me.

[Alexander]

again, i'm not trying to create "bad publicity" for Donors Choose, or hurt it in any way.

the program has gotten a ton of great press that this blog is unlikely to affect in any way.

and, if it's as good and effective a program as its supporters say it is, then it's just me being cranky me (nothing new, nothing big).

for what it's worth, i'm not the first person to ask about donors choose.

for a 2004 discussion that includes lots of support for the program along with some interesting questions and ideas, look here:

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/31935

in any case, the notion that i should be ashamed for asking honest and reasonable questions about the program (on my own blog) seems pretty extreme.

however, the strong response i'm getting is also a good reminder that blog posts, like emails, are sometimes easily misconstrued because of the lack of context and tone.

[Maureen Waters]

It is a very simple process.
DC allows teachers who are new to their web site to write up to three proposals.
When a teacher has a proposal funded, he or she can then write more proposals. Donors respond in large numbers based on what they read on the site.
Donors connect with a teacher, not so much the school or the administration. This is what makes this organization so great. It takes a village (with an internet connection) to make our schools better.

Maybe it would help to begin to answer Russo's questions if Ann, Maureen, SARS, Kirsten,Kelsy,
Robin Stean, Allison, Michael Byer named their schools.

[Linda Erlinger]

I know that the folks who have responded here have illustrated the impact it has had on them as teachers and/or as supporters, so I will focus on the specific technical questions you’ve asked.

First, DonorsChoose is truly a marketplace. On the “supply” side, teachers are able to submit up to three projects initially, and, as they become experienced DonorsChoose users with successful projects, they can submit upwards of twelve projects at a given time. Since our opening in Chicago in 2004, 1,604 teachers from 448 CPS schools – 72% of all CPS schools – are using DonorsChoose.

On the other side of the equation, individuals – people we like to call citizen philanthropists – select which projects they find to be most compelling and then contribute directly. Our Chicago donors come from all walks of life and from 49 states (does anyone know anyone in Wyoming??). 70% of donors report that their DonorsChoose contribution was their first ever donation to a public school.

Since 2004 in Chicago, over $873,000 worth of resources have been delivered to an estimated 60,000 students via 1,800 different projects… fulfilling both basic needs and innovative ideas. 99% of these resources went to high-need schools.

Last year, 75% of teachers with projects posted had at least one funded. And word of mouth is how they learn about our program … and this has been so successful that at this moment 1300 Chicago projects are waiting for people to make their ideas a reality.

You can visit http://www.donorschoose.org/locale4/about.php?page=impact to see a web page that measures DonorsChoose outcomes – it is updated daily. In addition to this, twice a year we compile reports for CPS administration and AIOs to report on which schools have had what projects funded. I am more than happy to share the summary of this with you.

Since we are a marketplace, we try very hard to make sure that we can meet the needs of the teachers submitting requests – and given the success of word of mouth, our tiny (but fabulous) staff spends most of our time building partnerships, raising awareness, and getting folks to fund requests. And we use any and every means to engage the greater community in supporting our teachers – traditional marketing (we’ll soon have a co-promotional campaign with the CTA!), online marketing, blogger challenges, celebrity pushes, events, word of mouth, earned media, you name it… our passion is to do all we can to connect teacher and student needs with those who can and want to help. And the Claire Danes email that inspired your posting today has resulted in $46,000 for classroom resources nationwide today alone. Not bad.

Our hope is that all teachers throughout the city are aware that DonorsChoose is a resource for them. It took New York City 5 years to reach 50% of its schools… we did this in less than a year. DonorsChoose Chicago is the smallest geographic region (of 11) that DonorsChoose currently serves, but last year it raised the second highest dollar amount for resources and serves the greatest percentage of schools. This is because we have amazing teachers and an incredible community who believes in their work and wants to support them.

To answer the question of whether or not resources are distributed equally between teachers, the answer is, of course, no. As I mentioned above, 75% of teachers have at least one project funded, however a few teachers are prolific with over 15 projects fully funded, But the truth is that I am OK with this. In fact, I am inspired by this. FINALLY, teachers are encouraged and rewarded when they are innovative and entrepreneurial.

Folks in education can talk all they want about how important teachers are, but the truth is, they are the least empowered in a large and bureaucratic system. And the spirit of those who want to go “above and beyond” is too often squelched because of lack of resources. DonorsChoose gives us all a simple way to help.

Linda Erlinger
Executive Director - DonorsChoose

[Michael Beyer]

I've taught on the far south side, just blocks from the city limit, and this year I am on the far west side, both of which are poor communities. In each school not many teachers, less than 10% it seemed, have signed up on DonorsChoose. I tried to help as many as technophobes I could, but still most teachers didn't bother.

As for your initial question, of course funds aren't equally distributed, but should they be given to teachers who don't put forth the basic effort to receive them? My answer is no; if DonorsChoose goes unused by those teachers, so will the supplies generously donated. DC, or any non-profit for that matter, isn't the same as the CPS budget, which should be evenly distributed.

My only complaint might be is that more affluent schools are allowed to request donations, however, DC allows donors to make that decision by posting statistics of "Percent free lunch", i.e. kids who might need additional supplies. Forcing or limiting people to donate to projects, schools and teachers they don't want to support isn't a good way to run a non-profit.

[Katie]

Donor's Choose does one thing that few people in the media, government, or administration does- it asks the teacher what they THINK they need. Teachers are with their students 8 hours a day, but they are always the last person to have a say in what their students need. At my old school I had no leveled books, no art supplies, no science equipment but tons of math math manipulatives. So of course, the second week of school a giant box arrives with what in it- math supplies. No one asked me what I needed- I don't have a say. I ended up getting leveled books for guided reading, supplies for learning centers, and classroom library books, but they didn't come from my school- they came from Donor's Choose. I can guarantee that my students learned more in that year because of Donor's Choose. Other grant foundations may provide similar resources, but in many of our low income schools- we are in emergency situations- NO books, No math manipulatives, NO computers, etc. We can't sit around and wait 5 months for the review process of many of those other foundations. If I taught in Naperville, I would have no problem waiting around for my Rochelle Lee books to arrive, but then again I wouldn't need them, would I?

I think DonorsChoose lacks controversy- if you want to expose some controversy or inspire some debate on education non-profits- take a look at Teach for America or New Leaders for New School- there is lots to be said about those organizations and their practices- esp. here in Chicago.