Donors Choose
palmd | October 6, 2009How cool is this? If you, my readers, can fully fund this cause by 5pm EDT, I'll donate my next blogging check to DonorsChoose. There's about $290 left to go, so it shouldn't be that hard. C'mon, folks...even if you can give one or two bucks, it adds up fast, and encourages others to give.
Go for it!
palmd | October 6, 2009You guys have been fantastic. You've helped fully fund several programs now. Donations have reflected my readership---individual donations have ranged from a few dollars to a few hundreds of dollars. Every single dollar helps, and no contribution is too small (but homeopathic giving is discouraged). So why don't you click over and consider sending a couple of bucks to a cool project? I'm especially fond of this one; only $291.00 left to fully fund language aids for deaf kids.
How 'bout a challenge? Let's try to fund this one project today. We have the rest of the month to finish the…
palmd | October 5, 2009You guys are fantastic. You've fully funded another project. This one gets kids in a tough neighborhood focused on the outdoors in a positive way, exploring their environment. What a great project. I feel proud to have you as readers, and I'm even more proud I married a teacher. Teachers are working their butts off to get the basic needs of their students funded, and even little donations from others help them get there. These students are lucky to have teachers who care enough to go the extra million miles.
Addendum
Wow! You guys just finished funding another project, this one for…
palmd | October 4, 2009One of the projects on our list reached it's "fully funded" status! Now, donors from other challenges pretty much kicked our asses, but one of our readers helped, and we can be proud.
But there are more projects to go, all of which help out Michigan classrooms that are desperate. I'm not going to pretend that we'll get all nine remaining projects on my list fully funded, but we can at least make a significant dent. Even small donations help, and they are, of course, tax deductible. If you can't give, spreading the word to others via twitter, email, and facebook is just as good---really.
palmd | October 3, 2009Today begins the Jewish festival of Sukkoth, originally a harvest festival. Like many religious holidays, it carries a mandate for charity. During this time, it is traditional to build a temporary structure called a sukkoh and to do as much living as possible there. It is also traditional to invite guests. In the ancient mythology, some of those guests are the ancestors of the Jewish people such as Abraham, Sarah, Issac, Leah, Rebbekah, Jacob, Rachael, and others. European Jewish mythology is filled with folktales of the Ancestors coming to the sukkoh in disguise to sample the…
palmd | October 2, 2009When I was younger I took a temp job for the University of California Center on Deafness. I was lucky enough to be taken in and taught by the close-knit deaf community at the Center, and my eyes were opened to the special challenges of deafness in a hearing world. This was before instant messages, when we would set a phone on a coupling device to use the TDD.
I also learned about the special health challenges in the deaf community---doctor visits without interpreters, lack of access to real medical information, especially about HIV. At the time, HIV was hitting the deaf community hard,…
palmd | October 2, 2009In the context of a needy public school classroom, $165.00 is a lot of money. Not enough, but a lot, and every little bit counts. Every $5.00, every re-tweet to let others know helps. Today's headlines show US unemployment continuing to rise, but here in Michigan, that's old news. Unemployment state-wide is over 15%, and in many areas is twice that.
So keep up the hype. If you can't give, email or tweet others about the challenge. While I would have liked to specify science-y projects, my home state is hemorrhaging, so I've picked any at need projects in Michigan.
As for what I should…
palmd | October 1, 2009I really like this DonorsChoose thing. I already got a few donations toward needy Michigan classrooms! I'm so excited that I'm using exclamation points!!
In the past, other ScienceBloggers have set specific goals and offered to mutilated their bodies or whatever for the cause. I'm not quite that brave, but I'd love to get the excitement going. Every little bit helps here in the Great Lakes State, so help us out!
(By the way, those damned GeoBloggers are in on this, and whose life did they ever save? And Dr. Isis? The only heart she has is on the dissection table! C'mon, don't let these…
palmd | September 30, 2009Here in Michigan, schools are hurting---a lot. Classrooms are crowded, schools are closing, supplies are non-existent. Even in "wealthy" districts, the system is failing. Parents, when they can, supply the bulk of classroom supplies.
This is a good time to think about DonorsChoose, a unique charity that allows teachers to create proposals, and donors to choose what to fund. Many of these have matching funds available. Over on my left sidebar you can click over to check out my page, which is devoted to projects in Michigan. Please consider even small donations.
thusspakezuska | November 3, 2008To all of you who participated in the ScienceBlogs Donors Choose Challenge this year - many, many, many heartfelt thanks! We raised $503 here at TSZ but together all the ScienceBloggers raised almost $31,000! That money will have an impact on at least 10,000 students!
All but one of the proposals I selected ended up getting funded, via your contributions and other sources. I've gotten some feedback from some of the teachers and thought you might like to hear what they have to say. I know your cash is hard-earned, and money is tight for everybody right now, so I am especially grateful to…
thusspakezuska | October 20, 2008...with Donors Choose?
Hello, Zuskateers! I'm setting off today to go spend time with mom, who is in the hospital again. I don't know how long I'll be there, which means I don't know when I'll be getting back to blogging. If I have time while I'm there I'll try to get in a short post or two but it seems unlikely. If you comment on something and it gets lost in moderation, please be patient; I will try to check every so often to make sure someone's pearls of wisdom did not get caught up in the spam filter.
In the meantime, while I am gone, maybe you would like to consider supporting the…
thusspakezuska | October 14, 2008Yay! Prizes! From our benevolent Seed overlords!
All you have to do is take part in our Donors Choose campaign.
Here's the scoop:
Seed has agreed to do prize drawings again this year for donors who give to DonorsChoose, beginning this Friday [10/17/08]. We'll be giving away 50 Seed mag subscriptions and about 15 or so other prizes from an assortment of mugs, laptop covers and USB drives. Each Friday we'll choose winners for a third of the prizes. In addition, there will be one 'grand prize' at the end of the drive, of an iPod Touch.
To enter the drawing, all you need to do is forward…
zooillogix | October 10, 2008Dear Incredibly Wealthy Readers,
A week or so back we announced our participation in the Donors Choose challenge. Specifically, we are raising money for elementary school teachers in the Bronx to bring animals into the classroom and a teacher outside of DC build out his outdoor ecology program. These are worthy, and very affordable, causes. Just imagine it: a tarantula in a 1st grade classroom named after you!
If you have a minute and can spare some money for a small donation, it would be much appreciated. There is a banner ad type link if you scroll down on the left sidebar or you can click…
zooillogix | October 2, 2008Zooillogix is participating in DonorsChoose, a very cool annual fundraising effort to directly provide needy schools with the materials they need. There are literally thousands of projects to choose from and we selected some pretty modest ones that we hope our readers will choose to support.
#1 An enterprising elementary school teacher in the Bronx wants to buy supplies to keep all sorts of live critters in the classroom, including: hermit crabs, butterflies, worms, ladybugs, pill bugs, and praying mantises.
#2 Another Bronx elementary school teachers wants to get an incubator, fertilized…
thusspakezuska | October 2, 2008I just took a look over at Sciencewomen's site and see from their sidebar widget than they've already raised $395 from 9 readers as I write this. Now, I realize I only got my post up late last night and they've had their announcement for DonorsChoose up since early yesterday morning but still. Doesn't a story like the following just break your heart? This proposal only has three days left, but your dollars will be matched by Philadelphia Friends! Can't we come up with $257 for these kids and their teacher in the next three days????
"Miss, I need a pencil!" "Miss, I can't take the notes, I…
thusspakezuska | October 1, 2008It's October, and that means it's DonorsChoose time again! ScienceBlogs bloggers are, once again, participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. Basically, we ask you, our readers, to help public school teachers across the U.S. fund proposals for classroom supplies, activities, and field trips.
It's a shame we have to ask at all, but our nation's public school teachers are woefully underfunded and often spend their own personal money to purchase needed classroom supplies. Looking over proposals to build my challenge, it was heartbreaking to see that for some teachers, the lack of…
thusspakezuska | November 4, 2007October has come and gone, and the Scienceblogs Donors Choose Challenge is over. You helped TSZ raise $1500 of a total $54,335 from all Scienceblogs challenges. That plus the $15,000 matching funds from Seed brings the total amount raised for Donors Choose to $69,335!!!! Over 155 classroom projects have been fully funded, and thousands of children affected by the generosity of Scienceblogs readers.
I promised you at the beginning of October that everyone who donated to my challenge would be entered in a raffle for a special TSZ t-shirt that reads "Zuska Says: Don't Make Me Puke On Your…
thusspakezuska | October 29, 2007Wow! I asked, and you responded. Thanks! My challenge is funded at 100%. That's $1500 (actually, a little more) impacting 345 schoolkids!
You can still donate if you want to, even though my initial goal has been reached. There are still some open proposals on my challenge list, including two of the ones I described here.
Thanks again! And don't forget, if you donate, there is a seriously good chance of winning the fab Seed prizes.
thusspakezuska | October 29, 2007...the deadline for the end of the Donors Choose fund drive is rapidly approaching. I'm bummed that it looks like TSZ will not reach 100% of its funding goal. That means some potential matching funds will go unclaimed. I realize many of you may have other favorite charities you support, so I thank you for considering Donors Choose.
Wouldn't you like to donate to Experiments in Calculus? Help a teacher buy two calculator-based data collectors to let students learn calculus through experiments with distance, velocity, and acceleration. There's a teacher in Trenton who needs funds to buy…
thusspakezuska | October 14, 2007I just want to remind those of you who have donated and those of you who might be thinking of donating to Donors Choose, that if you want to receive your nifty Women in Math and Science magnet AND have a chance to win the "Don't Make Me Puke On Your Shoes" t-shirt, you need to send me a copy of your email receipt from Donors Choose. Send it to me at bobtownsuz AT yahoo DOT com. Also, include your mailing address. And thank you for donating!