Teachers Raise Money With Click Of A Mouse

by Breanna Fuss, Reporter
March 12, 2013 5:02 PM


We’ve all seen students selling candy bars, cookies, and even magazines to help raise money for their schools. But now some teachers have come up with a new way to bring in money. Harrisburg School District is an example. They’ve raised thousands of dollars with the click of a mouse.

Money is tight for Michael Amolins, a science teacher at Harrisburg High School.
 
“My average budget can range anywhere from $500 to $1000 for the year, which in a science course isn’t much,” said Amolins.

So a couple of years ago, he found an extra source of funding that has changed the way he’s bringing lessons to the classroom. It’s called ‘DonorsChoose.org.’
     
“You know can spend 20 minutes filling out an application that you'd like to have in the classroom, and then you just sit back and wait for donors to find interest in your project and bring it into the classroom,” Amolins said.

Over the past two years Amolins has received $2,000 in donations, which has funded three lessons, one of those being a set of books for his entire classroom written by an O’Gorman graduate. Another was something Amolins said wouldn’t have been possible without the site.
 
“We purchased a flight simulator program, and we actually took students out to the Tea Airport, and did a whole aviation unit,” said Amolins.

Bill Hoffman works for Horace Mann, an insurance agency that has contributed to teachers like Amolins.
 
“Locally we have funded around 30 projects, but across the state just from our little office we've had about 68 projects get funded, and we've reached over 5,000 students,” said Hoffman.
     
Hoffman said with ‘DonorsChoose.org,’ all it takes is a click of a mouse and you can help too.
    
“You're going to be surprised that you might find your own kids are going to a school that has projects that need funding,” said Hoffman. “And it might effect their classroom.”
     
And for Amolins, he said the website has made all the difference in making sure his students get the best education possible.
 
“The key things we try to do an educators is try to integrate real world applications, and unfortunately, with the minimum budget you can only do the textbook work and maybe a few other projects,” said Amolins.

Nearly $21,000 has been raised for classrooms around the Sioux Empire within the last year.
    
If you’d like to help out a classroom you can check them out at  DonorsChoose.org .