My first DonorsChoose project got funded in nine days. My second one sat for three months and died quietly. The difference wasn’t the need — my kids needed both things just as much. The difference was how I wrote them.
If you already have an account and a project or two under your belt (if not, start with DonorsChoose for Beginners first), these are the DonorsChoose project tips I wish someone had given me before that second flop — learned the slow way, by reading my funded projects next to the ones that stalled.
Keep the Ask Focused: One Need, Not a Wishlist
The project that died was called something like “Books, Flexible Seating, and Supplies for Engaged Learners.” Reading that title now makes me cringe, because it told every donor the same thing: this teacher wants everything. Donors don’t fund everything. They fund one thing.
The project that got funded in nine days? “Flexible Seating for My Wiggly 7th Graders.” One need. One clear picture of what the money buys.
Here’s what I learned: every project should answer one question in one sentence. “My students need wobble stools because they can’t sit still through a 55-minute period.” “My students need headphones because half of ours broke and the rest smell like 2019.”
If you actually have three needs, write three projects. Donors like funding something they can picture arriving in a box — thirty copies of one book has a beginning, middle, and end, while “classroom enrichment” is a fog.
Shorter totals tend to fund faster, and every item on your list should serve the same single need. If you can’t explain why item seven belongs with the other six, cut it.
Write a Title That Gets the Click
Donors browse. Someone opens donorschoose.org, scrolls through a list of teacher requests, and clicks what catches them. Your title does all the work in that split second.
My rule now: say what the thing is and who it’s for, in plain words, and let a little personality sneak in. “Help My Students Read Without Sharing One Battered Textbook” beat “Classroom Library Books for 6th Grade ELA” because one sounds like a real classroom and the other sounds like a supply order.
A few things that work in titles — and honestly this is one of the simplest DonorsChoose project tips there is:
- Name the actual item. “Headphones,” “novels,” “microscopes,” “wobble stools.” Vague titles (“Resources for Engaged Learning”) blend into the scroll.
- Name the kids. “My 8th Graders,” “My Bilingual 6th Graders,” “My Students.” Donors fund kids, not line items.
- Keep it under about 10 words. If your title needs a comma and a conjunction to survive, it’s two titles. Pick one.
Skip leading with the dollar amount or the word “urgent.” I’ve tried both — “urgent” reads like a spam subject line, and a dollar amount answers a question nobody was asking yet.
Take Photos That Help (Not Hurt)
Adding photos is the single most skipped step on the whole site. Most projects have no photo or a catalog-style stock image, and neither one makes a donor reach for their wallet.
The photos that have worked best on my projects are almost embarrassingly simple:
- The current situation. The broken headphones in a tangled pile. The one class set of novels with the spines falling off. The reading corner with three beanbags for twenty-eight kids. This is your “before” photo, and it’s the most persuasive image you have.
- The kids using something similar. My students mid-class, actually working — not posed, not staring at the camera, just reading, building, doing math. (Check your school’s photo policy first. At my school I need parent permission on file, and I keep a folder of students whose forms are cleared so I’m never guessing.)
- The space where the new stuff will live. An empty shelf waiting for books, a corner where the seating would go. It tells the donor you have a plan.
Backs of heads, hands holding books, over-the-shoulder shots — these tell the story just fine and keep me out of trouble. Donors can smell a stock photo, and a slightly messy real classroom beats a perfect fake one every time.
Write the Student-Impact Part Like You’re Explaining It to a Neighbor
The description section is where I used to overwrite the most. My early drafts read like grant applications — long sentences, education jargon, words I’d never say out loud. Donors aren’t administrators; they’re people scrolling on their phones who want to know one thing: what will this do for actual kids?
Now I write the impact section the way I’d explain it to my neighbor over the fence. Something like:
“My seventh graders share one set of classroom novels, and by third period the books are falling apart. Thirty copies of this book means every student can hold their own copy — no sharing, no waiting, no reading over someone’s shoulder. Most of my students don’t have books at home, so for many of them this would be the first novel they’ve ever held their own copy of.”
That’s honest and specific: a real number, a real detail, nothing inflated.
A couple of habits that made my descriptions stronger — one of the most underrated DonorsChoose project tips is just getting specific here:
- Use real numbers. “Twenty-eight students,” “three class periods a day,” “fifty-five minutes.” Numbers make a classroom real in a way adjectives don’t.
- Say what happens now. Donors fund the gap. “Right now we share…” or “Right now I can’t…” is the most important sentence in the whole description.
- Skip the jargon. Nobody donates because of “differentiated instruction” or “21st-century skills.” Say “kids who learn better standing up” instead.
Keep it the length of a good email — specific enough to matter, short enough to read on a phone.
DonorsChoose Project Tips: Timing and Match Offers
Timing is one of those DonorsChoose project tips that matters more than most teachers realize. DonorsChoose runs match offers — where a company or foundation matches donations to certain projects, sometimes doubling them — and a project posted during a good match window funds dramatically faster. My nine-day project had a match. My three-month flop didn’t. Not a coincidence.
Here’s what I do:
- Post when people are paying attention. Late August and September is the busiest giving season on the site, and the weeks before the holidays are strong too. January is slow — not a reason to never post then, but a reason to have a project live in September.
- Watch for match offers before you post. DonorsChoose announces them on the site and by email. If a match is coming for your category, wait a week and post into it — a 1:1 match effectively cuts your goal in half.
- Keep one project live at a time, at least at first. Multiple live projects split your own promotion energy. Fund one, thank everyone (more on that below), then post the next.
- Promote it yourself. The site brings some traffic, but my funded projects all got a boost when I shared the link — family group chat, teacher friends, Facebook. You don’t need a big audience. A few people who know you teach is enough to get the first donations in, and early donations make strangers more likely to give. Nobody wants to be first on an empty project.
One more timing note: projects expire. If yours is about to die unfunded, don’t just let it — DonorsChoose lets you relaunch, and a tighter, retitled version of the same need often does better the second time. That’s exactly what happened with my dead project.
The Part After Funding: Thank-Yous and Photos
This is the part everyone skips, and it’s the part that gets your next project funded. DonorsChoose requires a thank-you package — photos of kids using the materials plus thank-you notes — and plenty of teachers treat it like homework. I get it, you’re busy. But the donors who funded my first project came back for my second one, and the thank-you package is why.
My system is simple. The week the materials arrive, I build the thank-you into class:
- Photos: Ten minutes during independent work, kids actually using the new materials. I batch-take them, pick the best three or four, and upload the same day so it doesn’t become a weekend task.
- Student thank-you notes: It’s a writing lesson in disguise. My students write genuine thank-you notes — specific, in their own words, mentioning what they got. “Thank you for the books. I like having my own copy because…” beats a generic “thank you for your donation” every time, and the kids take it seriously when it’s real.
- My own note: one or two paragraphs on what the materials changed. Honest and specific.
Then I post the next project sooner than feels comfortable, while the thank-you photos are still fresh. Returning donors are the closest thing to a sure thing on the site, and the thank-you package is how you earn them.
If you want to go further down the funding rabbit hole, my post on classroom grants beyond DonorsChoose covers where else to look, and Title I Funding Explained breaks down the bigger funding picture at schools like ours. And if you’re starting from zero — no account, no project yet — go back to DonorsChoose for Beginners first, then come back here when you’re ready to write the thing.
No DonorsChoose project tips guarantee funding, but together these give your project a real shot: one clear ask, a clickable title, honest photos, a description that sounds like you, good timing, and a thank-you that brings donors back.
What’s the one project you’ve been putting off posting — and what’s the single item at the top of the list? Sometimes naming the one thing is the whole battle. If this was useful, I send out practical posts like this regularly — the kind of stuff I’d tell you in the teachers’ lounge.
Internal link suggestions:
– [DonorsChoose for Beginners] → /donorschoose-for-beginners-teachers/
– [classroom grants beyond DonorsChoose] → /classroom-grants-for-teachers/
– [Title I Funding Explained] → /what-is-title-i-funding/