Charles Best

In launching DonorsChoose.org out of his Bronx classroom, Charles Best pioneered the crowd-funding movement. Today, teachers at half of all the public schools in America have created project requests on DonorsChoose.org, and more than a million people have donated $200 million.

That scale of growth has spurred Charles and his team to tap the power of both crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, making DonorsChoose.org the first charity ever named to Fast Company’s list of the “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.” Charles explains how the DonorsChoose.org team has:

• Opened up a mountain of data so that people can discover what schools most need and which teaching topics are trending, inspiring hundreds of web developers to build apps that engage the public in public schools.

• Crowdsourced many aspects of integrity assurance and quality control, a shift that has delivered huge productivity gains as well as cost savings.

• Turned DonorsChoose.org into a platform that companies like Google, Facebook, Starbucks, and Chevron are using to do cause marketing, to engage their customers and employees in philanthropy, and to “do well by doing good.”

Charles concludes by giving everyone a DonorsChoose.org gift card (underwritten by his speaker’s fee) to spend on a classroom project of their choice.