Philanthropy
skookumchick | October 27, 2008This is it, folks - we're coming round into the home stretch of DonorsChoose, with one week left in October. And there is some great news - ScienceBlogs has decided to donate FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to Donors Choose, distributed among the bloggers who are participating! I'm still checking about whether this is participating *blogs* or *bloggers* -- if the latter, that means Sciencewomen will have $1430 to distribute among our projects, woo hoo! So we want your help on deciding how to distribute the funds.
Update at 11:34 am: Sb says $715 per blog, not blogger. However, we can still make…
sciencewoman | October 26, 2008Our DonorsChoose blogger challenge ends on Friday, and we've still got a couple of projects left to fund in our challenge. Yes, we've added a few along the way, but there's still a few of Alice's original picks that have been sitting there all month just waiting for your $.
You're making Alice a sad engineer.
And not just Alice, Academic Crossroads has also been waiting to see these projects funded, and even put a plea on her blog. Both of these projects have gone from 0% funded to well on their way to realization, but they each need <$250 to complete and make a difference in the lives of…
jstemwedel | October 24, 2008By now you've probably seen the news that Seed has kicked in $15,000 to fund projects in our Blogger Challenge slates. We are, as always, thrilled at our Overlords' generosity.
This year, though, rather than applying the money at the end of the drive, we have a situation where each blog with an active challenge has been given control of a $715 giving credit at DonorsChoose. In other words, we get to decide how to use this windfall to help fund classroom projects ... and to get more readers involved in funding them.
So I'm going to see if I can get some audience participation from you on…
skookumchick | October 21, 2008At last, I am happy to reveal to you our final design for our t-shirt prizes for Donors Choose. They are below the fold, in all their glory, and designed by the awesome YellowIbis. Recall if you donate to our Donors Choose campaign, (note our goal is $2K; we're currently at $876...) and email me your donation receipt we will select 5 people randomly to receive a t-shirt from YellowIbis on top of donating 20% extra. You can choose one of their cool sciencey ones, or our Sciencewomen one. And note, the t-shirts are designed with both men and women in mind.
Thanks, YellowIbis! And everyone…
jstemwedel | October 21, 2008On the East Coast, the sun is rising on day 21 of Blogger Challenge 2008. With only 10 days left in the drive, it seems like a good time to check how the ScienceBloggers with challenges are making out. Thus, I present the "Top Six" standings to date:
Amount raised:
Uncertain Principles ($4,887)
Green Gabbro ($1,689)
DrugMonkey ($1,340)
Good Math, Bad Math ($1,328)
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) ($1,257)
Terra Sigillata ($998)
Donors:
Uncertain Principles (78)
Sciencewomen (21)
Green Gabbro (15)
DrugMonkey (14)
Adventures in Ethics and Science (13)
Laelaps (…
skookumchick | October 20, 2008Y'all have been so great in our Donors Choose campaign that we needed to find some more projects to support for the rest of the month and to help reach our goal of $2000. So we've added these projects particularly because they're so close to being funded you might be able to help them go over the top. And remember our commitment to bumping up your pledges by 20% each, plus if you email me and Scienceblogs your pledge confirmation you have a chance at some swag. (Note: Lab Lemming, your pointed comment is well taken, and we agree. I'm not sure what the Sb donation deal is myself, being new…
jstemwedel | October 20, 2008Another generous donor (who prefers to remain anonymous) made a contribution to my challenge and requested some artwork from the sprogs.
The requested subject matter, cats, is one about which the Free-Ride offspring are pretty enthusiastic (perhaps because I'm allergic to cats and can't live with them). So, send in the cats:
From the younger Free-Ride offspring:
From the elder Free-Ride offspring:
Thank you for your generous contribution, donor!
If you'd like sprog art (or poetry, or other goodies) of your own, take a look at some of these worthy projects, make a contribution,…
jstemwedel | October 18, 2008What would the Blogger Challenge be without hand-drawn bar-graphs?
You'll see that Chad is about 80% of the way to a "monkey dance". In less than $1300 in contributions to his challenge, he will be dancing for the amusement of his readers.
As for the big incentives I'm offering, my challenge has received a mere 10% of the $4000 goal that will result in my adorning my left ankular region with a philosophy of science tattoo. The overall ScienceBlogs donations (currently creeping up toward $16,000) put us a little closer (about 17% of the way) to the $90,000 threshold for my getting the Sb…
skookumchick | October 16, 2008So the t-shirts mockups are being drafted, and the numbers of kids who are being helped are increasing based on your generosity, and I'm so psyched about our high number of donors compared to blogs with many more readers. Y'all rock!
Therefore, it is high time for me to kick in my incentive. I will match ScienceWoman's 10% donation pledge. Based on the final amount of donations, which I hope will make at least $2000 from our blog readers and friends but not including SW's donation, I will add in 10% of the total, which I will add to whatever projects are closest to being funded.
In…
jstemwedel | October 15, 2008This is a project in Brian Switek's DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge, and if it doesn't find full funding by the end of today, it's not going to happen.
Throw Us a Bone!! was proposed by Ms. P., who teaches in a high poverty high school in a rural community in south Mississippi:
This year will be my first year to teach Anatomy and Physiology. I will be walking into the classroom with virtually no resources to help bring the words and pictures from the pages of the textbook to life for these students.
My students need hands on materials to help bring the unseen processes that go on in our…
sciencewoman | October 15, 2008When you hear the word "poverty," what do you think of? Starving children in Africa? Subsistence farmers in Asia? Is poverty some distant concept? Something terrible, but far off? Yes, and no. Because, while poverty is terrible, it can also be close to home. Maybe as close as the public school down the street.
Poverty is the vexation of the junior high school science teacher with no budget to buy paper to print worksheets, tests, and notes. She teaches in a "low-income, rural district in southwest Mississippi" and $243 would give her a year's supply of paper for 120 students.
Poverty is the…
skookumchick | October 14, 2008We've just heard from the Sb overlords:
Seed has agreed to do prize drawings again this year for donors who give to DonorsChoose, beginning this Friday. We'll be giving away 50 Seed Magazine subscriptions and about 15 or so other prizes from an assortment of mugs, laptop covers and USB drives. Each Friday we'll choose winners for a third of the prizes. In addition, there will be one 'grand prize' at the end of the drive, of an iPod Touch.
To enter the drawing, all you need to do is forward your donation confirmation emails to scienceblogs@gmail.com.
Now, the bad news is you have to forward…
jstemwedel | October 10, 2008In a lot of ways, the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge is a community endeavor. It is all about what you, our community of readers, can accomplish together for public school students and teachers in need. Also, it's a great example of how citizens of the blogosphere think about community -- not just a group of people clustered geographically, but people we're connected to by common interests and values.
While you're working together to make things better for school kids in classrooms across the fifty United States, you can also work together toward what Chad calls a 'big incentive'. Chad…
jstemwedel | October 10, 2008Today is day 10 of Blogger Challenge 2008, in which generous ScienceBlogs readers help public school teachers come up with the funds to deliver the educational goods to their students. As I write this post, challenges mounted by ScienceBloggers have crossed the $10,000 mark.
Given that this money has come from 113 donors and that there are about a bajillion ScienceBlogs readers, I'm guessing there are some folks thinking about making a donation but hanging back from actually donating. My hope is that this post will give you that little push forward you might need.
You'll recall that I've…
jstemwedel | October 7, 2008We're in the last hour of week one of Blogger Challenge 2008, and ScienceBlogs readers have already donated a respectable $8,999 to public school projects. Yay ScienceBlogs readers!
You know I'm offering you enticements to donate to my challenge, but tonight I want to point out some proposals in other ScienceBloggers' challenges that need to be funded soon before the proposals expire.
Here they are, with the ones expiring soonest at the top:
Chefs & Cooks with Autism
(a refrigerator to store perishables for cooking classes in NYC)
3 days left
need $2,253
(Dispatches from the Culture Wars…
sciencewoman | October 7, 2008We got off to a strong start in the Sciencewomen Reader Challenge 2008. In the first 48 hours, we attracted 9 donors who gave a total of almost $400 to our DonorsChoose projects that fund impoverished public school science classrooms. And then we plateaued and our ticker hasn't budged a milimeter in the last few days.
Maybe you gave to other DonorsChoose challenges or maybe you thought you'd do it later. But we'd love to see you give a little bit of money to help out our handpicked projects, too. So in order to provide a little extra incentive, Alice, I and the good folks at Yellow Ibis have…
jstemwedel | October 6, 2008(Kick off post here.)
I'm inspired by The World's Fair to write this update in the style of Harper's Index.
22: number of ScienceBlogs blogs that have so far mounted challenges.
8,480: dollars donated so far through those challenges
700 billion: the only number other than the year in a ScienceBlogs blogger's challenge title
3,078: students reached by the proposals funded by donations to ScienceBlogs challenges
90: donors who have donated to ScienceBlogs challenges
10: largest number of donors to any of the challenges mounted by ScienceBloggers
3: challenges mounted by ScienceBloggers with a…
jstemwedel | October 6, 2008A generous donor who prefers to remain anonymous made a contribution to my challenge and requested some artwork from the sprogs. In particular, the donor requested dragonflies:
Many species are considered vulnerable or imperiled by the Nature Conservancy (Species Report Card) and it's my next animal group to target for outreach and conservation. ...
Please post the jpg image on your website for awareness of dragonflies... I don't want any recognition for me. Please acknowledge the little artist with teh mad skillz though! We need entomologists to describe and name all the new species we…
jstemwedel | October 2, 2008We're in day 2 of our month-long drive to fund projects in public school classrooms across the U.S. As I write this post, the generous readers of ScienceBloggers have given a total of $5,589. And, since yesterday, challenges have been mounted by:
Dispatches from the Culture Wars (challenge here)
Signout (challenge here)
The World's Fair (challenge here)
Zooillogix (challenge here)
Check out the ScienceBlog leaderboard to follow our progress. And thanks for being such a generous bunch of blog readers!
jstemwedel | October 2, 2008You already know that we're working with DonorsChoose to raise some money for public school teachers who are trying to give their students the engaging educational experiences they deserve. You also know that our benevolent overlords at Seed will be randomly selecting some donors to receive nifty prizes (details about this to be posted as soon as I get them).
As I did last year, I'm going sweeten the deal by offering some incentive to everyone who donates to my challenge. And I'm adding a few new options this time around. Here's what you can get:
An original (and probably nerdy) poem,…