Classroom Essentials allows teachers to create lists from an inventory of basic classroom items, without an essay, project submission, or minimum materials cost. Once a list has been published, donors can donate to support a teacher’s list. As teachers receive enough funding for any one item, they can immediately submit an order for that specific item. DonorsChoose sends that order to our vendors, and they’ll prepare your order for shipment.Â
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Teachers: Creating your Classroom Essentials list
To create your first Classroom Essentials list, you’ll need to register an account and agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.Â
You can add any amount of eligible items to your list; there is no minimum materials cost. You’ll be able to select additional materials as you receive additional funding. You’ll be able to order your materials by highest priority.
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Once your list is published, you’ll be able to adjust the materials and quantity based on what you need, freely adding or removing items, as well as ultimately selecting which materials and how many you would like ordered.
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Teachers: Ordering your items
No longer do you need to wait for your entire project to be funded before ordering materials!
Once you have enough funding for any whole line item, then you can order it immediately. After you’ve submitted your order, we’ll get to work processing that shipment with our vendors.Â
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You can spend up to the amount available on your list, or you can spend a partial amount at any time. You do not need to purchase supplies with all available funding at once.Â
Once an order has been placed, you’ll be unable to change the requested materials. Shipments may take up to 3 weeks to arrive. We’ll let your principal know once any items have been shipped and expected arrival date(s) at your school.
If you need tracking information or have questions, you’ll need to contact our team.
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Donors: How do I donate to a teacher’s list?
When you find a teacher’s Classroom Essentials list, you can add a donation directly to your cart, much like you would for a traditional project. You’ll head to checkout once you’re ready to donate.Â
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Within checkout, you’ll see the corresponding donation for a teacher’s list. Your donation is to the teacher, and with your donation, they will get to decide which classroom basic items from their list they need most urgently. You can’t specifically fund a certain item from a teacher’s list.
After you’ve completed your donation, you’ll get an email confirmation and donation receipt.Â
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Frequently Asked Questions
Since 2000, the idea of a “project” has been core to the DonorsChoose model. Projects have sustained 700K+ teachers who created 2.24 million of them to get supplies for their classroom thanks to support from over 5 million donors. The project model has been flexible enough to accommodate teachers’ endless creativity — but it’s not the ideal structure for all of a teacher’s classroom needs, particularly when a teacher may need a small quantity and/or low cost items. Classroom Essentials lists provide teachers with a much simpler way to get basic classroom supplies, with no essay or minimum cost required.
We have a limited inventory of items available for Essentials lists. That inventory includes:
- Bandages
- Crackers (cheddar)
- Crayons
- Disinfecting wipes
- Erasers (standalone and pencil tops)
- Fruit snacks
- Glue sticks
- Highlighters
- Laminating pouches
- Markers (regular and dry erase)
- Paper (color and white)
- Pencils (regular and color)
- Pens (felt tip and ballpoint)
- Play-Doh
- Sticky Notes
- Tissues
To make this set of basic items more consistently available against shifting inventories, we cannot guarantee specific brands. If you’d like to request a specific brand of item, then we recommend creating a traditional classroom project.
Yes! You can adjust or add to your items after you’ve received funding, but prior to confirming and placing an order, as long as your list has enough funding to cover the costs. Once you’ve placed the order, we are unable to make any adjustments.
Please wait to place an order until your school opens or is able to safely receive packages. Once you place an order, items will be shipped immediately, regardless of time of year and due to the speed of processing, our team will not be able to stop your order.
If you need an item not available through Classroom Essentials, or if you require a specific brand, please create a traditional project! Through the traditional project route, you’ll have freedom and flexibility to request items beyond our limited Essentials inventory.
Our team is happy to support a return and reorder in circumstances where an item arrives damaged or broken. Due to the nature of the items included in our Essentials inventory, we are not able to support returns due to change of mind or classroom circumstances.
We have periodically had match offers for projects requesting “classroom basics”, which is a category of resources described here. While there are a lot of similarities between the types of resources requested through a Classroom Essentials list and Classroom Basics project, they are not interchangeable. Match offers for Classroom Basic projects do not apply to Classroom Essentials lists unless explicitly stated in the match offer description.
Donations cannot be transferred between projects and a Classroom Essentials list.
Yes! Please enter the gift code at checkout to apply it as your payment method; credits will be automatically applied if you are logged into your account.
You will only be prompted to place your order when you have enough funding for your topmost item. If you don't have enough funding for your top item, then you won't have the option to order. If you would like to order a different item on your list (for which you do have funding), then move that item to the top of your list and save your new list order. Once your list has been updated, you will have a prompt to order.
Follow these steps:
- Navigate to your List page, then click "Edit list". This will bring up a new page.
- Click the "Remove" button underneath each item, until they're all removed from your list.
- Click "Publish". Your list will save and no longer be visible because there are no items on the list anymore.