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Teachers are some of the most heroic people in America — fighting every day to give our kids the educations that they deserve. Underpaid, underrespected, and overworked, it's only natural that teachers sometimes feel frustrated, ignored, and isolated. When that happens, Donors Choose represents a lifeline, allowing teachers to reach out to their local, regional, and national communities to help their students achieve. The maps below show how those communities have responded over the years, knitting together teachers, schools, and communities into a complex fabric of support. These visualizations remind us that, when it comes to educating our children, we're all in it together.
For each city, the first map shows schools that have posted DonorsChoose projects. The next three maps connect donors to the schools they donated to — zoomed to the local, regional, and national scales. Click on each map for a larger version.
As an educational tool, I hope these maps can provide encouragement to students by showing them how their cities, their regions, and their country are reaching out to support them. On a more practical level, these maps can help teachers to understand where likely donors for a project might come. Some communities, like San Francisco and Memphis, receive the bulk of their support from the local level. Others, like New Orleans, Miami, and Detroit receive primarily national support. With this information, teachers can tailor their project pitches to their most likely donors.
