Empower Your Kids Through Giving: The Impact of Classroom Support Featuring Janelle Lin of DonorsChoose

Hey, welcome back, No Problem Parents, to the No Problem Parenting podcast. I am so glad you're joining us for episode 283. It has been a hot minute. This summer has taken all kinds of twists and turns here at No Problem Parenting.

We are expanding, we are growing, and the podcast had to kind of go on the back burner for just a little bit. And that said, we have 30 episodes in queue, so stay tuned. Be sure to click that follow button or the plus sign on the podcast app that you're listening to because we have some amazing resources coming up that are going to help you become that confident leader I say our kids crave us to be. Today's episode is all about the school season kicking off. Now there's a lot on our plates when school starts. There's a lot of scheduling. There's a lot of regrouping. There's a lot of getting back into structure and routine. But today I'm going to focus on something that can make a really big difference, not just for your own kids, but for entire classrooms across the country. So as we jump into the new school year, it's the perfect time to think about how we can support our schools and teachers. I'm excited to have Janelle Lynn with us. She has been at the forefront of nonprofit leadership with DonorsChoose for 13 years,

raising over $65 million for classrooms in need. And Janelle's journey is a powerful one, navigating her own challenges as a woman of color in senior leadership. She's about to launch a new podcast. We're going to talk about all of that and learn more about DonorsChoose.org in today's episode. And we're also going to give some shout outs to previous episodes where we've shared resources like Relibee Books, the Ketchop app, and Tony's, all of which can bring something special to our kiddos' learning experience. And before we jump in, I'm going to give you a tip. This is a tip that really is going to help any child, but especially those kiddos that are struggling with anxiety, or depression, volunteering and philanthropy can be incredibly empowering for kiddos who are struggling. It teaches them that they have the power to make a difference,

which not only boosts their confidence, it helps them see beyond their own struggles. And in my conversation with Janelle today, you're going to hear a little bit about how she incorporated DonorsChoose.org and her parenting of her kiddos. All right, you guys, stay tuned.

hey there parents thanks for listening to the no problem parenting podcast are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be are you losing your crap on your kids yelling giving in and exhausted at the end of every day you can start building confidence in your parenting immediately whether your child is a toddler or all grown up and still living in your house don't make this parenting gig harder than it needs to be register to become a no problem parent it comes with an app so you can listen to the tips and tools just like you're listening to this podcast. Click the link in the show notes or go to NoProblemParents.com. Become a No Problem Parent today. All right, welcome back No Problem Parents to another episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Fineman, and today we have a very special guest. Janelle Lynn is joining us. Janelle's experience as a woman of color in senior nonprofit leadership has inspired her to empower students from underrepresented backgrounds and identities.

With over 13 years of experience at DonorsChoose, she has raised over $65 million in donations to classrooms in need. She's here to share her insights on how parents can encourage their kids to get involved in giving back. I love everything about that. Welcome to the show, Janelle.

Thank you so much for having me. Step three of no problem parenting is all about changing the conversation with our kids. We talk a lot about the difference between unconditional praise versus conditional factual praise that our kids can believe in and hang on to before we pour on the unconditional. And then also the difference between empathy and sympathy, not feeling sorry for our kids, but instead empowering them, lifting them up, boosting them, filled with empathy and encouragement.

And so one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on the show is you're interested in philanthropy and teaching our kids about how to give back and kind of be outside of themselves. So I would love for you to first talk about DonorsChoose and the mission. Yes. So I'll start with just our origin story, which was 24 years ago, Charles Best was our founder.

He was a high school teacher in the Bronx, and he found himself in the classroom one day trying to teach a lesson. And he had one copy of The Little House on the Prairie for a classroom of 24 students. So he found himself having to photocopy this book, and he just said to himself, like, there has to be a better way. You know, his classroom didn't have the adequate supplies to teach his students.

So he started DonorsChoose as this website where teachers from around the country could post exactly what they need and where donors could search among the projects and donate $5 or donate $500 and then hear back from the classroom. So what happens is you choose a project you donate, and then you'll get thank you letters from the teachers. You'll get a cost report detailing where every dollar of your donation went. And then you will also get digital photos of the activity that you sponsored.

Then DonorsChoose takes the money, and we actually will purchase the items from Amazon or Best Buy or Lakeshore Learning and deliver them straight to the classroom. So you as a donor know exactly where your dollar goes. And so fast forward 24 years, DonorsChoose has now exploded. You know, we've raised and delivered over, well, close to $2 billion worth of books, crayons, paper, Chromebooks, you know, so many different needs spanning the gamut. And that's from over 6 million donors. And in fact, about 88% of all public schools have had at least one classroom project funded on DonorsChoose.

It's DonorsChoose.org. The website is super easy to use. Right now, there's over 50,000 live projects from every single state, rural, urban communities, etc. You can search from those projects to find your favorite subject in school or an age category or teachers who've never been funded and surprise and delight them. You could even search for teachers who are celebrating a birthday.

When my kids were younger, actually even today, I give them around the holidays a Donorshoes gift card and I have them search the site. So when they were younger, I'd have them search for their favorite book because our search function is that specific. You can even look for specific book titles and supplies. So one of my kids' favorite book was Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems.

And they would find all these projects requesting Knuffle Bunny. And we would give a classroom set to a group of kindergartners in Anchorage, Alaska. But as they got older, I've encouraged them to search for a subject or a passion that they really love. So for example, my oldest son, Lucas, loves robotics.

So he, for his bar mitzvah, he actually raised a lot of money to fund Lego robotics teams across the country. And so for students to just, for kids to just see that, just to notice that there are students out there just like them who just don't have the same access to resources, it's a very powerful thing. That is so great. So that segues me into teaching our kids about giving back.

And so what an awesome idea for a birthday gift to get one of these gift cards and then the child gets to choose who's going to get a gift. I mean, I just absolutely love that. As a parent yourself, what advice would you give to other parents about getting their kids involved in giving? Like, how did this even become a thing for you and your family?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think that giving back is such a great tool, right? Because you're not just making a positive impact, but you're also subtly teaching your kids values like gratitude and generosity. And it just feels good.

But I think it starts with first the noticing. Like how do you notice what your community needs? And then that noticing might turn into noticing what can we do to help? One of the challenges, I think, at a younger age is finding hands-on volunteer opportunities because there's oftentimes a minimum age for volunteer opportunities.

But two organizations that are really great at doing that volunteer match, which is around the country, you can definitely find one-time events for hands-on volunteer work for kids. And here locally in New York, there's an organization called New York Cares that does similar one-time events. So I think volunteering is really helpful. Other things that we do for my younger kids, we have three piggy banks, one for saving, one for spending, and one for giving to charity.

So it's just baked into their day-to-day. Whenever they receive money or a gift, they have to think about dividing the money in that way. For my teenager, Lucas, he can do the same thing. He uses the green light card.

I don't know if you're familiar with that, but he can allocate a portion for spending, a portion for saving, and a portion for charity. So I think that these are all things, practices, subtle practices that you can do from a young age on up to being a teenager to just imbue these values of giving back and just noticing and, like I said, transforming that into what can I do to go from noticing what needs to happen to actually helping my community.

That is so amazing. I haven't heard of Greenlight, so I'm going to look that one up. I've had the founders of Ketchop, K-E-T-S-H-O-P, if you've heard of them. No, I haven't actually.

Yeah, so that's a really great way because I love the piggy bank analogy, but so often cash isn't used anymore or coins or whatever. And so Ketchop is a way for kids to be able to put money aside if they wanted to buy something online. Online buying for kids is a thing, right, these days? and they're looking at Amazon and they're finding all the things that they want.

But they can also tie. They have a spot for saving money and a spot for investing as well or giving. All three things. So catch up is one that we've known here at No Problem Parenting.

But I also love that you say, Janelle, when you talk about noticing, we're big on that at No Problem Parenting as well, seeking first to understand, like, why is my child behaving the way they're behaving or why am I responding or reacting the way that I am? but also seeking first to understand what is the problem. And in no problem parenting, we're all about turning any problem into a no problem. Problems are meant to be dealt with and overcome. It says it right in the definition. And so one of the ways that we can solve a problem or recover from a problem is by noticing and learning more about what the actual problem is.

What trends or problems maybe do you see with teachers in terms of classroom needs and support? And how can we, how is DonorsChoose working to support teachers and address their current needs? Yeah. So after the pandemic, you know, we saw a big shift in the trends of like what teachers needed.

One big shift was a focus on mental health and social emotional learning. And so some of the resources that they were requesting were things like sensory items and like stress balls. Some of the other things were flexible seating. So being able to have like a wiggle stool so that you can really get your energy out and focus because students were so not used to being back in the classroom for so long that they needed these other outlets.

So we definitely saw that. The two largest subject areas on our site are literacy and STEM. So books, books, books, books. There's never enough books for students. And we love seeing the requests that are coming in from all of our teachers.

And then STEM, a lot of teachers are recognizing that they need to start teaching their students 21st century skills like computational thinking or coding. And how do we make this fun and exciting through hands-on STEM projects? So we see a lot of requests for those type of materials as well. I love this.

I'm so excited to be connected with you. We have a lot of connections to make with each other. And I'm just going to mention for listeners out there today, if they haven't heard of Rella B Books, R-E-L-L-A-B Books, amazing resource for social emotional learning. So definitely go check out Rella B.

But also Tony's, who's one of our partners here at No Problem Parenting, the Tony Speakers and the Tony Box. Amazing screen-free storytelling, creative play. And many classroom teachers would love to get these Tony Boxes into their classroom. And so I'm like, okay, I totally have to connect DonorsChoose with Tony's.

And the teachers that are reaching out to me to say, hey, how do we get these Tony's? I'm going to say, you know what, go on over to DonorsChoose. How can a teacher then request funding? So they just have to go to DonorsChoose.org slash teachers.

You can sign up. It takes 20 minutes to sign up. And it takes about 40 minutes to post your first project. The whole experience is very easy.

It's just shopping like you would normally shop and adding things to your cart. If there's a special, if there's an item, like I'm not sure if Tony's is on DonorsChoose, But if it's not, they can also do a special request and ask for it on our site. And yeah, that's it. And then they'll post the project.

We have a pretty high success rate on our site where over 75% of teachers get funded. And actually, the majority of that funding is coming from perfect strangers to the teacher. So folks who just want to help a classroom in need. I encourage you, if you're a teacher out there, to check out DonorsChoose and post a project because there's all sorts of donors, corporations, foundations that are always looking to fund classrooms like yours.

And I think that it's just such a great resource and a great community of other teachers who are looking to provide the best experience for their students as possible. Absolutely. This is just so amazing and such a great resource for so many people. And it doesn't matter how small your project is.

You might only need, you know, $50 to $100 to get some construction paper and some school supplies. Or you may want to do something like the Tony Box and have the newer upgraded technology in your classroom. Yeah, and every project has a three-month shelf life. So it can be up on the site for three months.

And then if it doesn't get funded, you can always tweak it. We have a lot of best practices and tips to help teachers optimize their projects for funding. Because to your point, if it's lower than $500, it's going to be easier to fund. But that being said, we have had projects.

I mean, we had one project in Hawaii that was $90,000. It was for a playground and it was funded. So you never know. But there are definitely tips and tricks to getting your project funded.

So excellent. All right. Now, aside from your day job with DonorsChoose, you are also gearing out to launch a podcast called Most Likely To. And I'm really excited to learn more about that.

Tell us what that's all going to, the topic and what you're going to be discussing on the podcast. Yeah, well, with our scale at DonorsChoose, we were just trying to think of a concept that would really make a huge impact on the students that we serve. And so we're really excited to launch Most Likely Too. It's a podcast for our middle school and high school students. And we'll be profiling every week executives and artists and authors, celebrities, all from underrepresented backgrounds.

We wanted to profile stories of like sort of blueprints for success that our students could see and say, OK, maybe one day I wanted to look into this career path or maybe this is an idea for my future. And just to make it normal to see amazing folks that look like the students that we serve. So that's coming out in June and can't wait to come back and talk about it. Is there a place that people can reach out to learn more about the show?

go to donorschoose.org slash podcast and sign up for more information on the show. We are looking for guests. You can go to help at donorschoose.org and share any ideas that you have or connections. We're always open to that. Janelle, this has been very insightful and I'm super excited to, like I said, be connected with you guys, teaching our kids to give back and introducing them to DonorsChoose.

So listeners, remember to check out DonorsChoose.org. Thanks so much for joining me today, Janelle. Oh, thank you.

It's such a pleasure. And yeah, look forward to being in touch. All right, there you have it. Be sure to go to DonorsChoose.org to learn more.

A huge thank you to Janelle. Her work at DonorsChoose is a great reminder that every small act of kindness can add up to something truly life-changing. Remember, teaching our children, especially those dealing with anxiety or depression, how to volunteer and contribute and give back can be a powerful tool in helping them overcome their own struggles, giving them a sense of purpose, and it's showing them just how impactful they can be.

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Until next time, remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks. So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this. Thank you.