http://www.donorschoose.org/ combines what’s great about the internet with the untapped potential of American schools.
Schools that sign up for DonorsChoose.org can raise money, a dollar a time, from people anywhere on the internet. The Huffington Post is helping out by sponsoring and promoting the project, Stephen Colbert is helping out by doing a roll call of #BestSchoolDay funders on his show tomorrow, and here at Stamen we’re proud to have designed and built a live interactive map of donations to the organization.
The map has two modes: a geographic view that looks like a regular map of the US, showing the number of projects needing funding in each state, and a bubble view that sizes each state according to those numbers. Each state has a custom link to the DonorsChoose.org website, so you can narrow down quickly which kinds of projects you’d like to fund.
They’ve gathered an impressive lineup—Biz Stone, Elon Musk, Russell Simmons (from my home town of Queens), Samuel L. Jackson, Serena Williams, and Sheryl Sandberg are only a few of the people involved, each funding towns and states that they’re passionate about.
All said, over 11,000 projects will be funded, over $14 million has been committed (including the $3.2 million in matching funds), and communities spanning 47 states and DC will have projects funded (!!).
“The reason HuffPost takes on this kind of project, which not every media organization would, is because we believe in the cause and we have a trusted partner in DonorsChoose.org. We don’t just want to raise awareness and leave readers in the lurch, we want to actually have an impact. We want to bridge that gap from awareness to action — which is what Stamen has helped us do with this beautiful map. This project is a really cool combination of vision, purpose, design and impact.”
— Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
I encourage anyone reading this—even if they have just $5 to spare — to participate. After the flash fundings happen and the lights turn off, there will still be over 15,000 classroom projects waiting for funding. And donations to classroom projects on DonorsChoose.org will be doubled, thanks to a $3.2 million match offer underwritten by Sergey Brin and WhatsApp founder Brian Acton. We hope you can go to www.donorschoose.org and fund a classroom project.
And if you like what you see, feel free to take a look at some of our other mapping and data visualization projects, or follow our Medium account.
