To All My Visitors: Help Me Celebrate Surpassing the 4 Million Mark by Donating to DonorsChoose Classrooms!

tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty

I am so lucky to be enjoying a flood of thousands of unique visitors right now, so much so that my blog will surpass the 4 million visits mark in an hour or less. To celebrate this incredible landmark, I ask you -- all of you -- to donate to a DonorsChoose classroom! DonorsChoose is a non-profit fund-raising agency that provides money to teachers throughout the United States to help "their kids" improve their education. I chose specific classrooms to help -- my "Challenge" students -- that focus on classrooms that are (a) high-poverty and (b) are requesting funds to help improve science education. It isn't every day that a blog surpasses 4 million visits, and it isn't every day that you have the opportunity to help lots of kids for the price of a latte or two, either! So let's celebrate 4 million by donating a little money to help brighten the futures of American kids!

Some Perspective: If every one of you who has been flooding in to my blog (thank you!) these past 18 hours had donated ONLY ONE DOLLAR EACH, my DonorsChoose Challenge classrooms would have $40,000+ to spend on teaching materials! Just sayin'!

In recognition of your kind gifts to help others, Princeton University Press is offering 2 books with a value of up to $30.00 each as prizes to two of my DonorsChoose Challenge donors: one book will be awarded to the donor who gives the largest gift, and the other book will be given to a donor who will be randomly chosen by my parrots. This kind offer covers most of Princeton University Press's trade science titles and guide books (view their catalogue PDFs here) and they also pay postage, so this costs you NOTHING! All that you have to do is send me your mailing address after making your donation and you will be automatically entered into this competition.

In addition to being entered into a drawing for a free PUP book of your choice, for every $20 that you donate to my DonorsChoose Challenge, I will give you one chance to win a Scanning Electron Micrograph, courtesy of the ASPEX Corporation, which is part of a promotional effort for their newest gadget: a benchtop SEM. For example, a $20 donation "buys" you one chance to win while $100 "buys" you five chances to win.

How will these winners be determined? My parrots will "chews" the winners either by directly picking the ballot out of a hat, or if they are being obstinate, I'll let them poop on a large piece of paper with a grid drawn on it, with one square representing one "ballot." (Of course, I am open to your suggestions for other ways that my parrots can "chews" the winner if you have a better idea).

LAST MINUTE ADDITION: Due to a mix-up with the post office, I am going to be giving away two more PUP books! These are their two newest field guides to the birds -- hot off the presses -- Birds of Western North America: A Photographic Guide (Princeton Field Guides) by Paul Sterry and Brian E. Small and Birds of Eastern North America: A Photographic Guide (Princeton Field Guides) by Paul Sterry and Brian E. Small. I am going to send these books to the donors (in a geographically appropriate way) who contributed to the For the Birds! project -- unless more of you donate, then I'll have to rely on the parrots to help me choose the winners.