raising money in the digital age

it turns out that raising money in the digital age is not so different than raising money in the not so digital age. several months ago i submitted a project to donorschoose.org. since then, my school has received a whopping $20 in donations. of that, i gave $10 just to get the ball rolling. i know, i know, times are tough. and the donorschoose site doesn't exactly make the donate button jump out at you. but it is especially frustrating given that the gates foundation is currently matching money donated to any project. i basically need 50 people to give $10 dollars to fund our project. we would like to buy some more digital video cameras so that our students can have better access to them and use them in their projects. this was a need designated and brought up by the students in one of our school senate sessions. you don't often hear students say that we need more books, but video cameras, now that's a different story.
so, if we don't get the money through donorschoose, i'll have to go back to raising money the old fashioned way. selling something through a school-wide sale. we are probably going to do a barbecue sale. times are tough but people still have to eat.
i know i have posted about this stuff before but it just goes back to the idea that schools will never have enough money given the current state of funding. the compromise stimulus package is a step in the right direction. the federal government helping out state governments when it comes to construction and some technology money. most reports i have read say that education will end up getting around 100 billion out of the stimulus package. that's less than what the house passed but more than what the senate had included.
but, before education advocates pat themselves on the back, consider this. the stimulus bill included $350 billion in tax cuts. for most americans that will mean about $8 a week less in taxes. i am of course, all for that, but i wonder if my $8 a week couldn't have been spent better by updating more schools, building some new ones, and funding some good education programs across the country. that's just what i wonder.
meanwhile, anyone want to buy a plate of barbecue?

Comments

geoff said…
Actually, we desperately need more books.
moriarty said…
we need more everything. what kind of books do you want? i want a class set of hiroshima by john hersey and a class set of the things they carried by tim o'brien and a class set of the maus II graphic novels...

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