How I got a $4,000 Smart Board from Donors Choose!      

Have you started an account at www.donorschoose.com  ??  Over the school year I got 8 Chromebooks and a full class set of headphones. Just this summer I got a $4,000 Smart Board! Donors Choose is a site where teachers select items they want and write a short description about your class and what the items will be used for. Donors can choose classrooms to support and if your project is fully funded within 4 months the items are shipped to your school! Be warned: once you get a project funded it becomes addicting. I'm relatively new to this so I know I have a lot to still learn, but here are some suggestions that I have picked up. My biggest secrets first. #1, look for the "Funding Opportunities" when you go to projects in your account. Businesses and even Anonymous donors often have things that they will match $ to $ for and sometimes even pay everything until only $100 is left. Google offered half funding for projects that serviced special needs and Craigslist paid $900 of a $1,000 Chromebook project because some of the students I teach have families in the military. Recently I was able to get a $4,000 Smart Board funded by getting half from a funding opportunity from an anonymous donor and then asking my technology director to pay the remaining half! It doesn't hurt to ask! Here are some of the other more basic suggestions that I have picked up. The site says that projects under $400 are easier to get funded so I started my first under this amount. I have learned that it helps to donate a small amount to my project first so that it doesn't look like it hasn't received any funding. You can do this anonymously and everything you donate is tax deductible so it's a win, win. A friend had a co-worker and her husband do the same so it already looks like she has 3-4 donors as soon as her project is posted. This seems to really help with motivating strangers to donate too. Her principal even posts her page on their school's Facebook page and that has helped her get parents to donate. I like to send a flier home explaining the project. I work in a poor district, but every donation helps and this has worked well for my 6th grade classroom. I have also learned to search the Internet for "Donors Choose coupon codes." Burlington paid half last Christmas time with a code I found that way! It looks like Thanksgiving-Christmas time is the time a lot of funding opportunities come out so if you don't see any now don't give up.  Try it! I have over $6000 of materials with very little effort! The teacher I told this to already got $4,000 worth of funding in 2 months!