Community Foundation Makes $100,000 Grant to Post-Sandy Classrooms

September 5, 2013

The Community Foundation of New Jersey today announced that it has made a $100,000 matching grant from its Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund to support classroom projects in schools impacted by last year’s storm.

The grant will cover half the costs of many worthwhile classroom projects submitted by teachers to DonorsChoose.org, an organization that connects donors with giving opportunities for public schools online.

The Community Foundation encourages people from across New Jersey to review the full list of classroom projects and help match the $100,000 grant by clicking here.

Classroom needs that are part of the project include new books for a school library, a laminating machine to be shared by several grade levels, and student subscriptions to Scholastic News magazine, among many others.

“This grant represents the kind of collaboration it will take to help our schools fully recover from Hurricane Sandy,” said Hans Dekker, president of the Community Foundation.  “We are pleased that our Sandy Relief Fund and its many donors are able to make sure classrooms impacted by the storm are once again safe and healthy learning environments.”

The classroom projects are in schools primarily along New Jersey’s coast in communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy.

“Bringing together teachers who could use a few extra resources with donors who are all too eager to help is fundamentally changing the ways in which people give,” said Charles Best, CEO and Founder of DonorsChoose.org.  “But what the Community Foundation has done, by making the projects in schools affected by Hurricane Sandy ‘half off’, is an even more powerful motivator.”

About the Community Foundation of New Jersey

Established in 1979, the Community Foundation of New Jersey’s mission is to support charitable giving that is inspired by our donors, targeted at making our communities stronger, driven by creative solutions, and effective in achieving lasting change.  Through a combination of Legacy Funds and Donor Advised Funds, the foundation has granted an average of more than $25 million each year to charitable organizations and currently stewards over $250 million in charitable assets for current needs and future challenges.

About DonorsChoose.org

Founded in 2000, DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help students in need.  Public school teachers from every corner of America post requests, and individuals can give directly to the ones that inspire them. To date, 151,000 public and charter school teachers have used DonorsChoose.org to secure $186 million in books, art supplies, technology, and other resources that their students need to learn.  Visit www.donorschoose.org/intro to hear Oprah Winfrey and Stephen Colbert tell the DonorsChoose.org story.