Donorschoose.org
While researching different grants I found a website that is an extremely awesome site for connecting donors with teachers. Its www.Donorschoose.org … and this site would be excellent to highlight in your course! (though sadly I don’t qualify for this site because I’m private & faithbased & and a preschool.. talk about having three strikes against me…). :-(
This site is extremely easy to navigate and a teacher could easily write a grant during a planning period for submission on this website. First teacher’s pick a project… lets say ipods for the reading center. A teacher would create a page that looks like this: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=748798#materials As a teacher, I could then send home letters to parents/extended family, letters to businesses in the community, community organizations (like the Red hat society, Woman’s clubs, church Sunday school groups, lions club organizations), and give them my project number and this website address where they could donate online to our project. Many of the projects on this site have also received funding through companies using this website. An example of such companies include: Chevron, Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Townsend Press, Chase Bank, Horace Mann, Sonic drive in, Starbucks, Capital one Bank, Bank of the West, Disney planet challenge, Build-a-Bear Workshop, University of Phoenix, UPS, Wells Fargo, Yahoo, Facebook, Lakeshore Learning, Disneyland, abc family, Leap frog learning, and many, many, more.
The process is simple:
1. Get hired in a public school as a teacher (administrators, student teachers, teacher’s aids can not apply)
2. Set up a website log it
3. Set up a profile
a. Describe your students, school, and classroom situation
b. Describe your project
c. Describe your need
4. Using the internet, find the products you need from the suppliers website and record the project items costs
5. …. An individual from the website will verify the project supplies costs (to make sure your getting a good deal)
6. Get the word out with letters/face-to-face visits/phone calls & facebook links
7. When project is funded (or the grant’s deadline expires) send out thank you notes (via this website as well) to the individuals and groups that helped to fund your cause
8. Pick a new project and repeat process. :-)
This is a fantastic site for teachers! It is sad to see that currently as few as 30 teachers in the greater Wichita area have requests for grants presently. If next year I am lucky enough to get one of the public school teaching jobs I applied for… I will ask my administrator for permission to share this website (and if needed guide the teachers in how to step up a grant step-by-step) with my coworkers during either an in-service or a PLC meeting.
This website might be old news to you…. But it blew my mind at how simple and easy it is to use when compared to the site www.grants4teachers.com that would list foundation names but no contact information/websites… and if you did find their website, finding their application for the grants was time consuming… and often times I again found I was not eligible being a preschool/private/faithbased institution. :::sigh:::
This site is extremely easy to navigate and a teacher could easily write a grant during a planning period for submission on this website. First teacher’s pick a project… lets say ipods for the reading center. A teacher would create a page that looks like this: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=748798#materials As a teacher, I could then send home letters to parents/extended family, letters to businesses in the community, community organizations (like the Red hat society, Woman’s clubs, church Sunday school groups, lions club organizations), and give them my project number and this website address where they could donate online to our project. Many of the projects on this site have also received funding through companies using this website. An example of such companies include: Chevron, Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Townsend Press, Chase Bank, Horace Mann, Sonic drive in, Starbucks, Capital one Bank, Bank of the West, Disney planet challenge, Build-a-Bear Workshop, University of Phoenix, UPS, Wells Fargo, Yahoo, Facebook, Lakeshore Learning, Disneyland, abc family, Leap frog learning, and many, many, more.
The process is simple:
1. Get hired in a public school as a teacher (administrators, student teachers, teacher’s aids can not apply)
2. Set up a website log it
3. Set up a profile
a. Describe your students, school, and classroom situation
b. Describe your project
c. Describe your need
4. Using the internet, find the products you need from the suppliers website and record the project items costs
5. …. An individual from the website will verify the project supplies costs (to make sure your getting a good deal)
6. Get the word out with letters/face-to-face visits/phone calls & facebook links
7. When project is funded (or the grant’s deadline expires) send out thank you notes (via this website as well) to the individuals and groups that helped to fund your cause
8. Pick a new project and repeat process. :-)
This is a fantastic site for teachers! It is sad to see that currently as few as 30 teachers in the greater Wichita area have requests for grants presently. If next year I am lucky enough to get one of the public school teaching jobs I applied for… I will ask my administrator for permission to share this website (and if needed guide the teachers in how to step up a grant step-by-step) with my coworkers during either an in-service or a PLC meeting.
This website might be old news to you…. But it blew my mind at how simple and easy it is to use when compared to the site www.grants4teachers.com that would list foundation names but no contact information/websites… and if you did find their website, finding their application for the grants was time consuming… and often times I again found I was not eligible being a preschool/private/faithbased institution. :::sigh:::
Program goals
Goal #4: Graduates of this program should be able to locate, evaluate, interpret, and apply appropriate research and scholarship to the study and solution of practical educational problems in curriculum and instruction.
Reflection
This site is simple and easy to use. I look forward to using it often in the future. I am disappointed that private schools are not able to use this site to help attain resources for their classrooms as well.