The Birth of Crowdfunding and The Wisdom of the Front Lines
When Charles Best launched DonorsChoose out of a Bronx high school back in 2000, “crowdfunding” wasn’t even a word. Today, DonorsChoose is the most trusted way to give to public school classrooms, and crowdfunding has become the go-to vehicle for people to finance ideas...
When Charles Best launched DonorsChoose out of a Bronx high school back in 2000, “crowdfunding” wasn’t even a word. Today, DonorsChoose is the most trusted way to give to public school classrooms, and crowdfunding has become the go-to vehicle for people to finance ideas, to kickstart creative projects, and to fund individual needs.
Charles shares how it all began at a Bronx public high school where he taught history, and how his fledgling nonprofit—still operating out of his classroom and staffed by his students–was catapulted by Oprah Winfrey.
He explains how he built DonorsChoose into a nonprofit platform that has inspired 5 million people—and companies of all sizes–to give $1.3 billion to fund 2 million classroom requests from teachers across America, and he shares the organization’s explicit focus on equity in American education.
Charles believes that the frontline wisdom of teachers enables them to come up with the most effective solutions for their students, and he argues that there are many more arenas—not just public schools–where the closer someone is to the front lines, the smarter their ideas will be. He shares new research from the University of Michigan showing that funding teachers’ classroom requests is a hugely effective way to lift student learning, research which indicates that organizations in all sectors can tap the wisdom of the front lines and thereby accelerate innovation.
Charles puts that credo into practice by giving DonorsChoose gift cards (underwritten by his speaker’s fee) to audience members, inviting them to choose classroom requests to support and to hear back directly from the teachers and students they choose to help.