Acquiring funds for the extra projects that make a student’s school life richer is possible if you know where to go.
Donorschoose.org is helping to make many teachers more productive in the classroom.
Manalapan native Lauren Siciliano is the New Jersey state coordinator for Donorschoose.org. She said Donorschoose.org began in 2000 and was the brainchild of Charles Best, a social studies teacher in the Bronx, N.Y.
“He felt that if donors could give directly to individual projects, choosing exactly how the money would be spent, it would work,” Siciliano explained.
The organization now serves the entire United States.
Siciliano said that in New Jersey, 340 school projects have been funded with more than $140,000. Nationally, the online donation program has provided $19.5 million for more than 45,000 school projects. More than 1 million students have been the beneficiaries of those projects.
Siciliano said people who are interested in supporting education can earmark their donation for a special project with Donorschoose.org. The online service allows donors to choose by state, school, subject, grade and cost, the type of project they would like to fund. After approving the proposal and linking it with a school, Donorschoose.org buys the supplies for the project and ships them to the teacher.
Every shipment includes a disposable camera and thank-you cards so the students may thank the donor and let the donor see how the money was used.
Teachers may use the Web site to post a description and a wish list of supplies for a project. Donors who are searching for a project to support can view the project descriptions.
The Web site has already proven sucessful in Monmouth County. For example, a donor’s interest in the arts made it possible for Tracey Corsano, a fifthgrade teacher in Freehold Borough, to make her proposal for “Arts Projects: Integrated and Ongoing” become a reality.
Corsano said she posted a proposal on Donorschoose.org that described the project and the supplies she needed. When a donor viewed that description, Corsano received the $532 worth of supplies she had asked for and the children were able to undertake the project.
Corsano currently has six other projects funded through Donorschoose.org, including a math project, where she received $152 for six sets of math cards; a math hands-on project that required pattern blocks, flash cards and dice at a cost of $506; a history project that includes books about world explorers at a cost of $647; a social studies project that provided her with $313 worth of National Geographic magazines and Time (magazine) for Kids; a writing workshop for authentic fiction and nonfiction literature for a craft study in writing and reading, with donations of $269; and a writing workshop to learn more about nonfiction books. The teacher requested two copies each of 23 nonfiction informational books for partnership reading. The cost of the project was $580.
Nicole Sabel, who teaches English as a Second Language to third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at the Freehold Learning Center, received a grant to help her students become better readers. Her project “Traductores” will provide six electronic translators at a cost of $194 for her new English learners.
Mary Aschenbach, who teaches second grade at the Freehold Learning Center, requested and received a set of Read Together Take-Home Packs, with books that students can take home and read with their family. The cost was $516.
A proposal at the Pine Brook School, Manalapan, was funded and 25 new books were added to a classroom library.According to the grant proposal, students had already exhausted their classroom library. The proposal requested and received $295 worth of new materials.
According to Siciliano, Donorschoose.org has been featured on several television shows and in national publications.