Thank You Notes

Having spent two afternoons last week with my students making thank you cards for our Donors Choose donors and looking for ideas for the Donors Choose thank you notes we need to make this week I stumbled across a post from Donor Power, which I have re-blogged at the bottom of my entry.

Thus far my classroom has had eight grants funded! Eight! We have received two of them, It's Sensational! (sensory integration materials) and "Science on Wheels" (a Delta Education science kit) and are awaiting the arrival of the other six. I am astounded with the generosity of perfect strangers (at least I think they were perfect strangers) who have funded the grants.

Every grant filled needs a thank you packet to be sent back to Donors Choose and forwarded to the individual donors that funded that grant. The thank you packet needs to include seven student thank you cards for each donor, a teacher thank you letter and the disposable camera sent to you filled up with pictures. With only eight students in our class, compared to the 20+ students in a general education class, and having only one of those eight students have any writing ability thank you cards are a challenge. However the post below reminded me that our goal is to make the donors feel like the rock stars they are to my students and I.

Our first set of thank you cards were made with Boardmaker, colored (hand over hand mostly) cut out (with switch activated scissors) and pasted onto construction paper (more hand over hand). They included glued on symbols that showed each students favorite items from the grant. I think for future cards we will bust out the glitter and really make them shine!

(In addition I think I will make a little print out that explains how my students made the cards and glue that on the back of each one.)

Post from Donor Power Blog:

40 thank-you notes = one grateful donor

A whole bunch of kids in South Carolina think I'm cool. And they don't even know I'm a glamorous B-list blogger!

These kids are impressed with me because I donated the money to buy a microphone for some music classes so they can record their singing. I did this through an organization called Donors Choose, which won a coveted Donor Power Award in March.

My gift was some weeks ago, so it wasn't much on my mind when I received a thick packet from Donors Choose: hand-drawn thank you cards from the kids. About 40 letters, most with drawings -- sweet, funny, heartfelt, real. (Logan hopes I didn't go bankrupt.)

They also pointed me to where on the web I can hear their recording of "Hot Cross Buns," made with "my" microphone. If you'd like to hear them too, click here.

In terms of emotional ROI, I'd say that gift was among the best charitable donations I've ever made.