Librarian DonorsChoose FAQ
Hi, friends! Today our guest blogger is one of my school librarian friends, Dr. Jennifer Heine, to answer some frequently asked questions about how librarians can benefit from DonorsChoose! If you’ve ever wished for more funding to engage your readers, and book fairs just aren’t enough, this blog post is for you! She says…
Like many schools, we had a lengthy break in ordering books, so when I started in a new library this past Fall, I had a long and expensive wish list to catch up with the many amazing and diverse titles of the past year. A grant search brought up DonorsChoose. I had heard the founder, Charles Best, a former history teacher, speak in the past about crowd funding for classrooms, but it sounded like it required a lot of fundraising and sales, which I am terrible at. In October when I was searching, though, Sonic was hosting its annual Limeades for Learning during which they fund hundreds of projects each week based on which ones have the most votes. I felt a lot more comfortable asking my friends and school community for votes than money so I wrote my book project with some flexible seating and asked my friends to vote.
Something I didn’t know at the time is that for your first project you get a code to use during the first week and all donations are doubled. I did throw that in to my social media pitch and e-mail to colleagues as well, and, much to my surprise, my project was funded within a week! Ten days after writing my project, I had these amazing titles in the library. They flew off the shelves! Everyone who stopped by sat on the seats (and they were easy to sanitize). It was so exciting!
Restrictions for DonorsChoose?
At this point I had the best problem ever. My amazingly generous friends and colleagues had funded us so fast that the Sonic contest was still going and I wasn’t entered. During that exciting first week, I had also joined the DonorsChoose Teacher Community on Facebook, and within this group I learned about match offers, and gift codes, and giving pages, oh my! I learned that I could get things funded for students at their homes. This is where I think DonorsChoose is HUGE because often school funds, whether it be local, activity, CAFE, fundraisers, etc have restrictions. For DonorsChoose the restriction is that it benefits students.
What are examples of DonorsChoose Projects?
At this point I had 1000 ideas, but no longer had a project in the Sonic contest, so I wrote what has become my absolute favorite type of project, a “book and…” kit. As a librarian, I can also be very creative with this since I work with so many grade levels, and this is a great way to collaborate with colleagues, brainstorming ideas, inviting classes to the library to complete the lesson, an evening Zoom or in person event, or a giveaway. My next project was for the book Peanut Butter and Jelly along with Ritz Crackers, single serve peanut butters and single serve jelly. I had just hit my friends up for votes and I was hesitant to keep asking my circle for help. Plus, at this point I wanted to fund book kits for every grade level. That was going to be a lot of projects as I already learned small projects fund quickly, so I took a crash course in funding thanks to the incredibly collaborative DonorsChoose Teacher Community.
What are the Best DonorsChoose Opportunities for Librarians?
There are a million lists online of how to write successful projects and fund them, and the DonorsChoose page has great help, but for librarians here are several to take advantage of:
DonorsChoose Classroom Rewards
DonorsChoose has many opportunities to earn DonorsChoose credits. Often they are grade level specific, but since we work with multiple grade levels, librarians have many opportunities. I was able to earn over $1000 in Classroom Rewards this past school year. Used strategically with a match, that’s $2000 in project funding that i did not have to seek out, which brings us to…
Matching Funds
Different generous companies offer matches on specific types of projects. Right now all classroom basic projects are being matched by Kleenex. During teacher appreciation many companies offered matches, and here in Texas every project was being matched by a Texas company. (Shout out to HEB and the Spurs Foundation who helped our school fund end of year reading and puzzle bags!) Matches cut your project cost in half making it more appealing to donors.
My experience has been that once a project gets under $100, there are these amazing individuals who come along for no other reason than generosity and finish them off. I had a lovely e-mail conversation with a retired librarian from a neighboring town who finished off one of my book projects out of the joy of spreading books. It truly is amazing! You can find current match offers linked right off of the page where you write your project.
Again, this offers librarians an opportunity for making campus connections. There was a match for middle school athletics, so I collaborated with our coaches on what our athletes needed to work out at home while competitions were closed for COVID. We were able to fund these great bags, along with a book, of course, for half the cost thanks to Kellogg’s match.
Match Days
I never did win the Sonic votes contest (although I’m excited to try again this October), but the next week there was a site wide match by Sonic! Sometimes site wide matches are specific to certain topics. Sometimes it’s up to a certain dollar amount. In the 9 months I have been using DonorsChoose there have been 4 of these type of days, with one being a one and a half match. These days are INCREDIBLE. I quickly learned that donors are extremely active on these days as they want to get the most out of their donations as well! On these days projects seem to fly off the board, so it is helpful to have multiple projects up. Also as described above, if you have credits you can move your own project forward at half the cost, and help out other teachers too. Giving to projects is as much fun as having one funded!
Giving Pages
Within DonorsChoose, there are giving pages that host contests and promote projects to move them along. It is a bit complex, but if you search for and follow DonorsChoose giving pages on Facebook and Twitter, all of the admins are extremely helpful in all things DonorsChoose.
#TeacherTwitter
As a librarian, Twitter is an incredible resource anyway for author connections, book news and giveaways, collaboration, but it is also huge in DonorsChoose funding. On the match days mentioned above, there will often be retweet threads to get projects out to donors. Again, it is incredible the generous folks out there who will finish out your project when they see it on Twitter. The generosity I’ve experienced in my short time in DonorsChoose is almost as fantastic as the amazing number of books we have been able to add to kids home libraries thanks to DonorsChoose.
As I described, I’m a new DonorsChoose user, but in this first year I have been able to fund 21 projects, which are really just a few big ideas broken into small chunks. Every list of DonorsChoose advice leads with “keep projects small”, and I follow that, although there are those who fund big projects as well.
What are some DonorsChoose Helpful Links?
There is a wealth of advice and support available. Visit these links to get started:
DonorsChoose Teachers Community Facebook Page
Tips from DonorsChoose Ambassadors
Referral Link – The $25 Reward will be applied to your first project!
A Guide to Giving Pages written by Giving Page Admins
Dr. Jennifer Heine is the librarian at Fenwick Academy in San Antonio Independent School District. You can find (and donate to) her Donors Choose projects here. And follow her on Twitter @JHeineEDU to see what books she’s reading and what new projects she has dreamed up!
What Next?
Is your librarian brain bursting with project ideas? Mine is! I used Dr. Heine’s advice to create and fund 2 DonorsChoose projects last year, and I look forward to bringing more reading fun to our students in the future!
Please comment below with the link to YOUR Donors Choose project or your idea for a book + something fun project! Let’s collaborate to engage our library learners!
I am a Media Assistant in a K-4 library. I love all these ideas. Can I use Donors Chose or do have to be a licensed teacher?