We aren't prescribing anything. We're not claiming to be the experts. We aren't advocating for or against any program. We are going to create a platform that says very explicitly what it is that teachers experience in their classrooms.

Learning is a critical part of our mission and organizational culture.

Students who learn to collaborate and negotiate - on Capitol Hill, in the board room, in everyday life - will outperform peers who have higher test scores.

Imagine someone with $10 finding a classroom project that speaks to them personally, seeing where their money is going, and realizing that they don't need to be a millionaire to make a difference.

To take on the jobs of tomorrow, students must become more than good test takers. They need to become makers who design, sketch, build, and prototype. And their classrooms will need more than a chalkboard and a set of textbooks.

An art project, a hands-on science experiment, or a special field trip can transcend textbooks and flash cards. No one knows this better than those teaching students with autism.

If you track your organization's creativity by the number of brainstorms on your calendar, you're missing out. It's more important to capture those unplanned sparks of inspiration that so often come when we're cooking dinner, taking a shower, or commuting to work.

I was lucky enough to go to boarding school for my high school years, and I had all the resources that I possibly could needed - squash courts and every book you ever would have wanted, every art supply.

Well, just as in the quality of public schools, there is massive disparity and the compensation given to the public school teachers.

If we can show the world that there are students in all sorts of communities who don't have the material they need for a great education, that will be the first major step to doing something about it.

We think there's nothing like sunlight to mobilize and energize citizens to demand change of their elected officials.

I get my share of 'cold' requests via LinkedIn from people who are launching non-profit or for-profit ventures and who request a meeting to get my input or help. I wish I could say yes to all of them, but given limited bandwidth, I say yes to the subset who've written a compelling description of their work and who are underrepresented.

I saw first-hand that all schools are not created equal, and the students shouldn't have to go without all of the materials that they need for a great education.

Within a single school, teachers often encounter differences in poverty levels, parent involvement, and student readiness.

In the sixth grade, I planned to start my own business making custom fishing lures.

Our mission is to help students in need and to democratize philanthropy.

The most incredible businesses are started by entrepreneurs who relentlessly pursue their passion, but passion works best with a thoughtful, ambitious-yet-grounded business plan.

Donorschoose.org is the one place where somebody with $10 gets the same level of impact and feedback from the recipients that Bill Gates gets when he's making a million-dollar gift.

People not only want to support public schools, but people warm to this idea of being a philanthropist, even if they might have only have $5 to spare.

DonorsChoose enables teachers not just to go public with learning needs in classrooms but also to unleash their imaginations about the best ideas to help students learn.

Every day, teachers across the country excite their students with new opportunities and experiences.

Students can't dream big when classrooms lack books, microscopes, and robotics kits - or even paper, pencils, and paste.

Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org. Requests range from pencils for a poetry writing unit to violins for a school recital to microscope slides for a biology class.

My colleagues and I were always having the same conversation in the teachers lunchroom about books we wanted our students to read, a field trip we knew would really bring a subject matter to life... And most of us would go into our own pockets to buy just paper and pencils.