NPR – Owen Phillips
“What happens when a teacher wants to assign an extra book for class, but the school can’t afford a copy for every student? For Dana Vanderford, an English teacher at L.W. Higgins High School in New Orleans, the book was Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. Buying enough copies for her class would have cost more than $800. Not an option. “I get $80 a year to buy resources for my classroom,” Vanderford says. “And I have 90 students per semester. So that $80 doesn’t go very far.” In the past, teachers in Vanderford’s position had a few options: Pay for the costs themselves, ask students to pay, or somehow try to raise the money. In 2000, DonorsChoose.org made that “somehow” a little easier. Public school teachers can use the site to “crowdfund” classroom project ideas, raising donations to pay for everything from basic supplies to technology upgrades, field trips, and more. Five days. That’s how long it took Vanderford to raise the money she needed to buy a copy of Fast Food Nation for each of her students.”(more)