At DonorsChoose, we prioritize historically underfunded schools, schools where students are most likely to have limited access to resources and learning materials.
To find current classroom requests from historically underfunded schools, please see this list.
We define historically underfunded schools as schools that include any of the following:
- At least 50% of students are Black, Latino, Native American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or multiracial
- At least 50% of the students qualify for free or reduced priced lunch
- At least 75% of students are students of color (Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or multiracial) and the same race
- Underserved rural communities (rural schools where more than one third (34+%) of the students are eligible for free and reduced priced lunch)
We rely on data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and MDR Education to determine which schools are historically underfunded schools.
Labels on a project page and school page will indicate a historically underfunded school.
Projects from historically underfunded schools will display this purple tag underneath the teacher’s name and school (outlined in yellow below).
You can also determine historically underfunded status by looking at the school page:
- If you're a donor, head to https://www.donorschoose.org/schools and find the school page you're looking for via state and district.
- If you're a teacher, on the right-hand side of your dashboard, under Tools & Resources, you’ll see a link to your school page.
If the school is a historically underfunded School, this will be indicated in the "About this school" section (shown outlined in yellow below):
If you think a school’s historically underfunded definition on our site may not be accurate, please review how we define a school's economic need before reaching out to us. If you still see an inaccuracy, or believe our data on student racial demographics is incorrect in the DonorsChoose database, please contact our team and provide us with either an official school report card/government website review of your school’s racial demographic, or ask your principal/director to email us providing updated demographics.