Charles Best: Connecting Dollars to Classrooms

Charles Best

Credit: Peter Hoey

DonorsChoose.org [2], a system that connects educators in need of classroom supplies with folks who want to donate them, is a teacher's dream -- literally. Charles Best, founder and CEO of the wildly successful Web site, is a former teacher, and his leap from classroom to (nonprofit) corporation is an inspiring tale.

It all started one day when Best was teaching social studies in the Bronx, New York. During lunch he was talking with fellow teachers. "My colleagues and I were having a conversation about spending our own money on copy paper and pencils, and not being able to give our students the books that we wanted them to read or do an art project, for lack of art supplies," he recalls. The teachers had great ideas for field trips and projects "that would really bring learning to life," Best says, but they lacked funding. Their only option was to supply the money themselves, which they often did.

As teachers everywhere know, the dilemma Best and his colleagues faced wasn't -- isn't -- unique. Teachers often dig into their own pocket to the tune of several hundred dollars a year [3] to make sure their students have the classroom supplies they need. In 2003, a nationwide survey by the National School Supply and Equipment Association found that teachers spent an average of $589 of their own money on supplies in 2001, up from $448 in 1999. Current estimates of the average annual out-of-pocket spending by teachers range from $500 per year to $1,200.

That conversation convinced Best there was a better way, and DonorsChoose.org was born. (See "DonorsChoose.org: A Better Way to Give -- and to Receive [4]" and "Wish List: Donated School Supplies Are Just a Click Away [5]" for more information.) As of February, the organization has processed $22 million worth of donations to projects. "That's about $20 million in resources delivered," Best says. The Web site maintains a daily accounting that provides other impressive statistics: By mid-February, the organization had attracted 60,279 donors, funded 45,175 classroom projects, and provided classroom support to 1,026,189 students.

Like many good ideas, the simplicity of the DonorsChoose.org system is key to its success. It works like this: A teacher submits a proposal for a class project, or perhaps a class field trip. What Best calls "citizen philanthropists" go to the Web site and choose a project they'd like to fund from the list of proposals. Donors can fund all or part of a project. DonorsChoose.org acts as the pass-through organization, using a donor's money to buy books, for example, and then making sure they're delivered to the teacher. The site also makes it possible for donors to learn, directly from the recipient, the status of the projects they favor.

In one recent case, a high school teacher in Newark, New Jersey, needed $188 to buy her students "thirty nutrition cards for making healthy choices and ink/toner so they can print out the information they find." The site indicated that $100 had already been donated and $88 was still needed. A big green button located next to the proposal made donating as easy as a few mouse clicks.

In 2000, when Best founded the organization, he thought he could run it and continue to teach school. "For four and a half years, I was teaching by day and doing DonorsChoose.org nights and weekends," he says. But by his fifth year of teaching it became clear that he couldn't do a good job at both. "If I wasn't going to be able to be a great teacher, I ought to do DonorsChoose.org full time." And that's what he's been doing ever since.

Does he have a favorite DonorsChoose.org story? Best recalls a conversation he had once with a magazine writer who thought he wouldn't find anything on the site he'd be interested in funding. "He told me he was most interested in saving the salmon in the Pacific Northwest," Best says. The former teacher saw that as a challenge and did a keyword search for "salmon" at DonorsChoose.org. Best didn't find one salmon-related classroom project; he found five.

The first project, he says, was a proposal from a teacher on an Alaskan island; the nearest store was forty-five minutes away -- by airplane. As a class project, her students, all native Alaskans, recorded folktales, wrote stories, and collected recipes featuring salmon and blueberries, "which their parents still subsisted on to a great degree," Best says. "They wanted to print their work in color and share it with the outside world, and they needed a color printer." Needless to say, that classroom got its printer.

The range of projects and challenges DonorsChoose.org and Best wrestle with every day is enormous, so his response to a final question seems especially apt.

"Do you miss teaching?"

"I do," Best says. "I still hope to go back one day and be a wrestling coach. That's one dream that I always had and never got to fulfill."

How do you use the Web or other technology in your work?

We use it internally in the wiki we maintain where colleagues post their ideas for improving the organization and where we capture best practices -- everything from that to contact information for every staff member. Two-thirds of the giving on our site is from citizen philanthropists coming to our Web site and picking projects they want to support online.

Which resources have inspired you and informed your work?

One would be the chairman of our board of directors, Peter Bloom, who is a friend and mentor. I've learned so much from him, and I tap him for counsel. I also turn to my colleagues for a lot of counsel. We've recruited a team that I think would be the envy of a for-profit company. We look to a couple of Web sites like Kiva and GlobalGiving for inspiration.

Who are your role models?

My wrestling coach from high school -- he was a lion of a man. He was really kind, but a pretty forceful guy, and the team really looked up to him. And Peter Bloom, the chairman of DonorsChoose.org, is genuinely a role model.

What advice would you give those who consider you a role model?

One thing DonorsChoose.org suggests is that you'll come up with better ideas if you're on the front lines. I wouldn't have thought of DonorsChoose.org if I weren't a teacher. Our model is based on the idea that front-line educators, be they teachers, guidance counselors, or librarians, know their students better than anybody else in the system. If we give them an open invitation to identify the resources students most need, they're going to come up with better-targeted, more innovative, more imaginative microsolutions than most top-down programs would.

What fundamental beliefs have guided your work?

We try to be humble at DonorsChoose.org, but we think our Web site and our model are pretty awesome. We also keep in mind that our particular solution is just one piece of the puzzle. We stay humble, and we don't think that we're the end-all, be-all solution to public education in America.

What is your mantra in the face of adversity?

Work hard and dig deep for a solution that nobody else has come up with, and use the power of the Internet to overcome hurdles.

Next article in "The Daring Dozen 2008" > Douglas Christensen [6]