Writing a DonorsChoose Project for Digital Resources

Quick answer: Digital curriculum is fundable through DonorsChoose, but usually as a Special Request rather than a catalog item, which requires an established account and a payment document from the seller. Keep the essay short, name the students, name the cost, and say what changes in the room. Copy the text below and edit six lines.

Can you even request digital materials?

Not straightforwardly from the shopping portal, because the standard vendor list is built around physical goods. Materials from a seller outside that list go through a Special Request project instead.

Two conditions matter before you plan around it. DonorsChoose requires teachers to have earned enough points to qualify for Special Requests, which in practice means a couple of funded projects already behind you. And the seller must be a US-based retailer. If you are new to the platform, fund a small physical-materials project first and come back to this.

You will also need a payment document: a quote or invoice from the seller showing the item, the price, and the seller's details. Email the seller and ask for one before you write the project. Most digital sellers will produce a quote the same day, and a few will supply a W-9 alongside it.

What makes a project fund fast?

Small totals fund faster than large ones. A $150 to $250 request funds far more reliably than a $900 one, and a curriculum download happens to sit right in that band.

Specific students beat general statements. Donors give to "my 62 eighth graders have no shared history curriculum" and skim past "my students deserve engaging resources." Name the number, the grade, and the subject in the first two lines.

And say what stops. Donors respond to a concrete before-and-after: forty photocopied pages a month becoming a printed unit students keep, or three teachers building the same lesson separately becoming one shared sequence.

Project text you can copy

Replace the bracketed parts. Keep it roughly this length.

PROJECT TITLE
A Full Year of History Materials for [NUMBER] Students

ABOUT MY PROJECT
I teach [NUMBER] students in [GRADE] [SUBJECT] at [SCHOOL NAME] in
[CITY, STATE]. [ONE SENTENCE ABOUT YOUR STUDENTS. Example: most of
them are the first in their families to take a course like this,
and about [X] percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.]

Right now we do not have a shared set of materials for this course.
I build each unit myself the weekend before I teach it, which means
my students get worksheets I wrote at eleven at night instead of a
sequence that was planned as a whole. Handouts do not match from one
unit to the next, and students who are absent have nothing to catch
up from.

This project funds one complete digital curriculum for the course:
[PRODUCT NAME] from teachlessons.us, $[PRICE]. It is a one-time
purchase with no subscription. It includes lesson slides,
differentiated student handouts, assessments and answer keys for the
full year, delivered as files I can print or share to student
devices.

What changes: my students get materials that connect week to week.
Absent students can pick up the unit from the class folder. And the
[NUMBER] hours a week I currently spend making worksheets goes back
into looking at their work.

Thank you for reading, and for anything you can give.

What to do after it funds?

Upload the seller's invoice promptly, because Special Requests move at the speed of the paperwork. Then post photos of students using the printed material, not screenshots of a PDF. Donors fund the second project because of the thank-you from the first.

Frequently asked questions

Can I request a subscription?

Recurring costs are difficult to fund and hard to sustain. A one-time download is a much easier ask.

How long does a Special Request take?

Longer than a catalog project, because of the payment document and manual processing. Build in extra weeks.

Can I choose the vendor?

For a Special Request, yes, as long as the vendor is a US-based retailer and the item is not already in the catalog.

What if it only partly funds?

Projects fund fully or expire. Keeping the total modest is the single best protection against expiry.

Related posts

• Getting the School to Pay: A Purchase-Order Request You Can Copy
• How to Spend a $250 Classroom Budget on Digital Materials
• Printable or Digital? What Survives Contact with a 1:1 Classroom