DonorsChoose let donors fund a teacher's itemized list

In 2000, Charles Best was a 23-year-old history and English teacher at Wings Academy, a public high school in the Bronx, spending a visible slice of his own $30,000 salary on classroom basics — copy paper was rationed, and any teacher who wanted to run a science experiment or an art project beyond the standard curriculum had to fund it out of pocket.

That opacity was the real barrier, not a lack of willing donors — people already gave generously to causes they could see working. Best's insight, tested first among his own colleagues, was that the unit of a charitable ask could be shrunk from 'help public education' down to one teacher's one itemized list for one class of students, with a dollar amount attached to each line.

Shrank the ask to one teacher's itemized list, then bought and shipped the materials itself, so donors saw exactly what they funded and got photo proof it was fulfilled.

Itemized lists with line prices let donors see exactly what they fund.

Direct purchase and shipping prevented funds from being diverted.

Photo documentation proved the specific request was fulfilled.

Specific asks converted low-trust giving into high-trust giving.

Replace a blind cash ask with a specific, itemized, line-priced request you fulfill directly, so donors can see exactly what they're buying.

By June 2024, DonorsChoose had funded 2.95 million classroom projects totaling $1.64 billion, with 889,169 teachers posting requests across over 11,000 school districts — 88% of all US public schools have had at least one project posted on the platform. DonorsChoose is credited as an early template for what's now called itemized or 'wish-list' crowdfunding — the same logic since adopted by disaster-relief registries, GoFundMe medical campaigns with itemized costs, and Amazon-wish-list-based charity drives, all built on the same trade: give up flexibility of use in exchange for donor trust.