DonorsChoose.org uses Salesforce and ExactTarget to match donors with classroom projects. Teachers spend their own money until donations arrive. The platform has funded $63 million to classrooms this year, with one in five dollars coming from personalized email campaigns.
March 24, 2016.
More than 1.5 million people.
$63 million.
20%.
I was a history teacher at a high school in the Bronx for five years. My colleagues and I would spend a lot of our own money on copy paper and pencils. And it just occurred to me that there were people out there who'd want to help teachers like us if they could see exactly where their money was going.
Many times as teachers, we have to try to be creative in how we get supplies for our classrooms. I have to either provide it myself or beg from parents or find an organization like DonorsChoose.
The Salesforce platform and exact target marketing cloud enable us to make giving truly personal, Enable us to make it hyperlocal, targeted to your interests, your favorite author, the sport you played in high school. It's about enabling someone who may have just $1 to be a full fledged philanthropist. More than a million and a half people have given the classroom project requests at DonorsChoose. And if we're going to serve even more students, we've got to reach out to those donors in a really personal way.
The customer journey starts when someone comes to donorschoose.org and in order to get to come back and give again, we need to be able to deliver them a story that's meaningful and that will speak to them. We send our emails through the exact target marketing cloud and we pull in data from the Salesforce platform to be able to customize and personalize the emails. If we're sending a back to school seasonal appeal and we're sending it to a person who lives in Chicago, we're able to pull in a classroom project that might be down the street from their home.
I remember the first time that I received an email from DonorsChoose and they let you know your project has been funded and I was just like totally shocked. I thought, why would somebody want to be donating to my classroom? You know, who are these people? And sometimes they're anonymous. That's what goes through my heart, is seeing people that are willing to donate and just take time. And it is just like having Christmas when, when you haven't had any presents and all of a sudden it just comes in.
This school year will deliver $63 million to classrooms. 20% of that will come from people who are responding to emails we send.
If it wasn't for donors choose, these cabinets in here would be empty. It gives me hope for the future. There's people out there that do care about kids.
So there are 11 million kids, most of them from low income families who've now got books, art supplies, field trips, and technology that they need to learn that's the result, $250 million of giving to projects on our site. This new movement that people call crowdfunding and donorschoose.org specifically can be a force for changing the system itself. We think we can have an impact beyond the books, art supplies, and field trips we deliver and actually be a force for education reform. And with the Salesforce platform and exact target, we're able to do.
