How I raised more than $7000 for my students and you can too.

Let's face it. School funding in the U.S. is completely inadequate at the classroom level.

If you want your students to have an enriching, well-rounded, experience the unfortunate reality is that the school budget doesn't usually cut it. What this means in practice is teachers going above and beyond to make it happen.

Here are a few tips that might help:

1. Use DonorsChoose for classroom projects

You already know it's there. You've been meaning to get around to putting up a project... whatever that means. Here's the deal: it is easy. To put up a DonorsChoose project you need to...

1. Pick out what you want (the site added Amazon as an option a few months ago. Now virtually everything is available, they also have some more niche retailers for specific academic projects)
2. Describe what you are raising money for, provide examples of the impact.
3. Hit publish.
4. When the materials arrive have your students write thank you notes and send them in.

Advantages of DonorsChoose - built in fundraising base (people go on the site to support teachers and students already), matching grants can effectively cut your fundraising goals in half or more. It is a 501(c)3, so all donations from friends and family are tax-deductible.

Total amount raised: $5000+ over the past five years.

2. Use Fundly for open ended fundraisers, trips

Fundly is a much more open-ended than DonorsChoose as a platform so you are more flexible with how and when you use the money. This is fantastic for events/projects with open-ended or variable costs (like field trips). However, with a bit more freedom comes a bit more risk for the donor (and no tax break). Basically you can tie Fundly to any bank account, and no one is going to have oversight on how you actually spend the money once it is deposited. As a result Fundly lacks the already present donor base of DonorsChoose and rarely if ever does Fundly have matching campaigns etc.

At Pritzker we raised more than $2000 last year to fund a trip to a national championship ultimate tournament in Cincinnati, OH. We are hoping to repeat the success this year raising another $2000 to go to Ames, IA for the  same tournament.

Advantages of Fundly - allows extensive ties to social media which automate a lot of your fundraising campaign (someone donates and it will automatically tweet/share on Facebook). Also, Fundly allows sub-campaigns, so you can set an overall goal for your team/club/classroom etc. but then individual students, or parents can set up an even more personalized campaign which feeds into that overall goal.

Total amount raised: $2500+ over the past year

3. Tell a story

As Simon Sinek elegantly puts it in his viral TEDx talk - no one buys what you do, they buy why you do it. Quite frankly your family and friends don't exactly care what you are raising money for in your classroom - they do care why you are doing it. What will the project or resource accomplish?

For example: we recently raised $300 for a portable ultimate field so we can roll it out on the public park and play on a regulation space. Fantastic for drills, great for learning the game - but that isn't why people give. They gave because that plastic roll-out field represents a(n only quasi-metaphorical) level playing field.  The project enables my students to compete with the same resources as upper-income suburban and private school students from around the city with whom we compete.

4. Use your network, real first and social too - and students. Not coworkers.

Once you post a new project you have to work to find donors (obviously). The first few projects you start might warrant emails to family and friends, a few keys:

• Tell the story, the why (see above).
• Be as concise as possible. Your project description on the website will have the details.
• Include the donate link multiple times (those fundraising emails from political parties have it right!)
• Include an ask - "If you are able to support my students, even $5 would be a huge help. If you can't, maybe forward this email to a friend who can or post to Facebook/Twitter." 
• Don't email your fellow coworkers/teachers - they are all raising money for initiatives too. Plus, they will see the project when you post to social media.

5. Write the thank you.

About a week after every birthday and every Christmas my mom would require me to sit down and do the most tedious of chores. I couldn't play with the present until the "chore" was done. Thank god for that lesson. Gratitude is the most important aspect of this process, first because without your donors your students don't end up with a rich, diverse education. Second, because without gratitude it is unlikely that anyone who donates will do so again. Unfortunate as it might be, with the current state of classroom funding in the U.S. it is likely that you will need everyone that donates now to do so again in the future. Write the thank you.

What tips do you have? Anything work well for you in the past?