Google Surprises D.C. Area Teachers with $232,000 in School Supplies

Google surprised 276 D.C. Metro area teachers Thursday morning with a donation of roughly $232,009 to fully fund hundreds of teachers’ classroom needs.

D.C. area teachers posted roughly 311 projects on DonorsChoose.org, a website that allows people to contribute to education-related funding campaigns to purchase classroom and school supplies like pencils, paper, books, laptops, art supplies, musical instruments, microscopes, exercise equipment and more. Google’s donation will affect roughly 31,362 students across the greater D.C. area.

Donors can contribute any amount toward individual pages either by name or anonymously.

“We are thrilled to partner with DonorsChoose.org to support all of the classroom projects of teachers here in the Washington D.C. area. We owe a lot to our teachers and want to thank them for being a constant source of inspiration,” said Jenny Backus, Google’s head of policy and community partnerships.

Google successfully funded 211 projects for schools in Alexandria, Arlington County, Calvert County, Charles County, Culpeper County, Fairfax County, Fauquier County, Frederick County, Jefferson County, Loudoun County Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Prince William County, Spotsylvania County, Stafford County and Warren County.

Google has executed similar “flash funding” campaigns across the country in recent months in Atlanta, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area.

“We are so humbled and grateful to Google for their devotion to our teachers and students,” said Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org. “This is a great day for DonorsChoose.org classrooms.”

Founded in 2000, DonorsChoose.org is a nonprofit website that allows teachers to create project requests for 11 million students, most from low-income communities and disaster-stricken areas.

Image: Courtesy Robert S. Donovan (Source: Flickr)