Charles Best

Best shares how, as a 24-year-old teacher at a Bronx high school, he created a model of giving hailed as “the future of philanthropy” by The New York Times. His story starts with the high school wrestling coach who inspired him to become a teacher, the most humiliating mistake he ever made getting DonorsChoose.org off the ground, and the most poignant moments of its journey, such as the projects teachers created to recover from the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Today, teachers at 70% of public schools in America have created projects on DonorsChoose.org, and more than $430 million has been raised to fulfill more than 735,000 projects.

Best connects his story to other sites that—like DonorsChoose.org—enable anyone to go public with their idea and request financial support. Best says these sites signal a profound change in how long someone has to wait to have their need met, and who you have to know, and how lucky you have to be, to bring a good idea to life. He says they represent a new kind of marketplace where gatekeepers no longer stand in your way.

In launching DonorsChoose.org out of his Bronx classroom, Best pioneered the crowd-funding movement. Today, teachers at half of all the public schools in America have created project requests on DonorsChoose.org, and more than a million people have donated $200 million.

That scale of growth has spurred Best and his team to tap the power of both crowd-funding and crowd-funding, making DonorsChoose.org the first charity ever named to Fast Company’s list of the “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.” Best explains how the DonorsChoose.org team has:

• • Opened up a mountain of data so that people can discover what schools most need and which teaching topics are trending, inspiring hundreds of web developers to build apps that engage the public in public schools.
  • Crowdsourced many aspects of integrity assurance and quality control, a shift that has delivered huge productivity gains as well as cost savings.
  • Turned DonorsChoose.org into a platform that companies like Google, Facebook, Starbucks, and Chevron are using to do cause marketing, to engage their customers and employees in philanthropy, and to “do well by doing good.”

Charles concludes by giving everyone a DonorsChoose.org gift card (underwritten by his speaker’s fee) to spend on a classroom project of their choice.