Today marks one of my favorite days of the year – the first day of the DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge! For those not familiar with DonorsChoose:

DonorsChoose.org grew out of a high school in the Bronx where teachers saw their students going without the materials needed to learn. Our website provides an easy way for everyday people to address this problem. Public school teachers post project requests that range from a $100 classroom library, to a $600 digital projector, to a $1,000 trip to the zoo. People like you can choose which projects to fund and then get photos and thank-you letters from the classroom.

Each year, hundreds of bloggers ask (beg) their readers to help underfunded classrooms around the country get the supplies they desperately need. The best part of participating in the challenge is the hand-written thank you notes! Each person who donates $100 or more receives a thank you package from the students who benefited from your donation! I’ve embedded copies of the letters I received last year below.

We’ve picked a bunch of great projects in Minnesota & Wisconsin to get the fun started! If there are other projects you would like added, email the link to Publisher at MinnesotaPerformanceMagazine dot com and we’ll add them to our giving page.

We’ve also added a new banner at the top of this page so you can track our progress this month.

NOW – my challenge to you! If we raise $20,000 this month, I’ll do some sort of wacky stunt as a thank you for participating! What type of wacky stunt are we talking about? I was thinking about shaving the letters “DC” into my head, but just to up the stakes a bit, I thought it would be fun to leave the wacky stunt decision up to you, our readers! You can email suggestions to Publisher at MinnesotaPerformanceMagazine dot com. We’ll post them here and we can decide which one everyone like the most!

Let the challenge begin!

DonorsChoose Teacher/Student Thankyou Letters – 2008 –