Giving Compass' Take:

• Fast Company reports on Craig Newmark's recent $1 million commitment to fund STEM-related public school projects in low-income areas via DonorsChoose.

• The platform Newmark chose was significant, as was the direction of the dollars. Other funders should look at how crowdfunding boosts education initiatives — and why STEM should be a focus.

• Succeeding when you're small: Some more lessons learned from DonorsChoose.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark just donated $1 million to help teachers in low-income areas fund STEM-related projects on the public school crowdfunding platform DonorsChoose. But the contribution should be particularly useful because it was designed in part by teachers themselves, and has a matching component, nearly doubling its value.

“We’re trying to excite everyone in the country to help out,” says Newmark, who says that, in addition to being vitally important yet enormously underpaid, 94% of teachers report having to shell out their own money for school supplies. “Teachers have already earned all this. It’s just a matter of recognizing that,” he adds.

In May, DonorsChoose surveyed over 1,000 participants within its teacher-specific Facebook community in order to identify exactly what subject seemed to be in most need of funding. About 80% identified STEM, so DonorsChoose and Newmark created a formula to stretch his impact: $850,000 is available as a matching bonus for donors who choose to give to eligible projects. Another $100,000 is earmarked to put toward specifically girl-in-STEM ideas that appear to be falling short of their funding goal. And an extra $50,000 will be made available once there’s a discussion on Twitter of projects people think should be considered (with the hashtag #STEMStories); the charity says it’s not looking for a specific number of tweets, just an interesting conversation.

Read the full article about Craig Newmark's $1 million donation to STEM projects in schools by Ben Paynter at fastcompany.com.