Posts Tagged “schools”

Preparing to leave San Francisco’s foggy embrace, I’m thinking about the work week ahead and which of the many open threads to needle first. One thing that came up last week was a twitter message from someone at Social Actions Labs, inviting me to test out their new DonorsChoose WordPress plugin on Firstgiving’s blog.

It didn’t seem quite right to use Firstgiving’s blog for this, but I was happy to try it out here on the ‘duck.  After all, I’ve blogged about DonorsChoose before.  So I signed up and downloaded the plugin.  The first time out I got an immediate failure due to a PHP version mismatch, but the team soon corrected that.  I installed the plugin easily.  But when I looked at the blog, I immediately went back and disabled it.  Apparently, I had a different idea of what a DonorsChoose plugin would do.

I sent off a note to the Social Actions Labs guy, who sent a nice note back a few days later. The gist of my issue with the plugin is that it added to every post a list of three DonorsChoose projects that might be related to the content of the post, hence “possibly related classroom projects.”  While there was a way to disable to plugin on selected posts, I felt that imposing itself on every post automatically was way too invasive.  I had been assuming that I could insert DonorsChoose projects either in the sidebar or in selected posts on an opt-in basis.  Only a handful of limeduck posts have anything to do with schools or charity.  Opting out of a couple hundred posts by hand was not what I had in mind.

Social Actions acknowledges that this is an early effort and in the spirit of open and agile programming, it will doubtless be improved over time.  And as much as I love WordPress, I have to hope for the sake of Social Actions and DonorsChoose that future versions of the plugin are compatible with Blogger and other platforms.  I guess they hadn’t figured out all the user types just yet.  On the other hand, several blogs have already adopted the plugin more or less as is:

• www.amysampleward.org
• www.maxschoolbus.com
• www.cogdogblog.com
• www.beyond-school.org
• www.newcritics.com

So it can’t be all bad.  I hope Social Actions Labs makes it even better and even more blogs adopt it.  I’m here for future testing.  Here are some DonorsChoose projects that aren’t mined from this text but are still interesting to me, and I hope to you, too.  Check them out, help make a difference.

Help the Henry L Higginson Elem School in Roxbury, MA get a digital camera ($285 needed)

Help the Thomas Edison Middle School in Brighton, MA buy books ($1,010 needed)

Help the Camp Curtain School in Harrisburg, PA get globes and maps ($567 needed)

These projects are linked to topics of interest to this blog, but not actually to the text of this post.  Food for thought.

Last week, I wrote about my experience with DonorsChoose and their thank-you packages. I got a very nice comment from Mike Everett-Lane explaining some of the inner workings at DC. Yesterday I got two more emails of thanks which included links to six more worthy projects, which I thought I’d share here.

Dear David,

Thank you so much for making “Through the eyes of a child…” a reality for Ms. Thompson’s classroom. By now, you should have received your thank-you package in the mail. If you have not received it, please email zach[at]donorschoose.org. We welcome any questions or suggestions.

We hope the feedback illustrates the difference you’ve made for Ms. Thompson’s students. In case you’d like to help another classroom, we’ve selected some projects for you that are similar:

Proposals from Suffolk, Massachusetts

• This…Is…Jeopardy!
• All the World’s a Stage Part 2
• Blending Science and the Real World

Proposals involving Visual Arts

• Picturing Small Moments
• Colorful Self - Portraits
• Centered on Learning

Alternatively, you can see proposals that need less than $200 to come to life.

Thank you again for your generosity.

Sincerely,

Putting on the marketeer hat for a bit, I have to admire the clever customized upsell. Nice work. And remember, you can save everybody some work if you cap your gifts at $99 each. But please make as many gifts as you can.