Charles Best (businessman)

Last updated

Charles Best is an American philanthropist and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, a crowdfunding platform for K-12 teachers serving in US schools, and the founder of Irregardless, a crowd-sourced writing style guide. In 2023 he became the CEO of Lakeshore Learning, a chain of educational supply stores. [1]

Contents

Education

Best attended high school at St. Paul's School, a boarding school in New Hampshire. [2] Best graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale College in 1998. He also holds a certificate in fundraising management from the Harvard Kennedy School. [3]

Career

Two years after his college graduation, Best launched DonorsChoose.org [4] while serving as a high school history teacher in the Bronx. Best founded the organization after seeing first-hand the limited resources and opportunities available in his school. The site allows teachers to post project requests for classroom supplies, resources, field trips and class visitors. Once donors fully fund a project, DonorsChoose.org fulfills the project request by purchasing the materials and shipping them to the classroom. By 2014, more than half of all US public schools had at least one teacher create a project request on DonorsChoose.org, and more than a million people gave over $200 million to classroom projects reaching 10 million students. [5]

Awards and honors

Oprah Winfrey named DonorsChoose.org one of her "Ultimate Favorite Things" in 2010. In 2011 and 2014 Fast Company named Best’s organization one of the "50 Most Innovative Companies in the World," making it the first charity ever to receive this recognition.

Fortune magazine named Best to its "40 under 40 hottest rising stars in business" for three consecutive years. In November 2013, he received the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, an honor for young Americans who are changing their communities and country through their commitment to public service. (Past recipients include Wendy Kopp and Cory Booker.) [6] In 2014, Best received the S. Roger Horchow for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen as part of the Jefferson Awards.

Best was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2006. Fellows are leading social entrepreneurs recognized for their innovative solutions to social problems and potential to change patterns across society. [7]

Best has also served on the board of directors for GuideStar and iMentor.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harvard Kennedy School</span> Public policy school of Harvard University

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public administration, and international development, four doctoral degrees, and various executive education programs. It conducts research in subjects relating to politics, government, international affairs, and economics. As of 2021, HKS had an endowment of $1.7 billion. It is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), a global consortium of schools that trains leaders in international affairs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Pincus</span> American Internet entrepreneur

Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship is a Swiss not-for-profit organization founded in 1998 that provides platforms at the country, regional and global levels to promote social entrepreneurship. The foundation is under the legal supervision of the Swiss Federal Government. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. Each year, it selects 20–25 social entrepreneurs through a global "Social Entrepreneur of the Year" competition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reading Is Fundamental</span> US non-profit organization

Reading Is Fundamental, Inc. (RIF) is the oldest and largest non-profit children's literacy organization in the United States. RIF provides books and reading resources to children nationwide with supporting literacy resources for educators, families, and community volunteers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DonorsChoose</span> American nonprofit organization

DonorsChoose is a United States-based nonprofit organization that allows individuals to donate directly to public school classroom projects. The organization has been given Charity Navigator's highest rating every year since 2005. In January 2018, they announced that 1 million projects had been funded. In 80% of public schools in the United States, at least one project has been requested on DonorsChoose. Schools from wealthy areas are more likely to make technology requests, while schools from less affluent areas are more likely to request basic supplies. It has been noted that repeat donors on DonorsChoose typically donate to projects they have no prior relationship with, and most often fund projects serving financially challenged students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Kopp</span> American nonprofit executive

Wendy Sue Kopp is the CEO and co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent nonprofit organizations working to expand educational opportunity in their own countries and the Founder of Teach For America (TFA), a national teaching corps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen I. Tse</span> American human rights defender

Karen Irene Tse. She is Swiss and American, of Chinese descent, and lives in Geneva. Tse is a human rights defender and social entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of the global non-profit International Bridges to Justice, that fosters legal rights in more than 50 developing countries, building systematic early access to legal representation, in order to avoid the use of torture by law enforcement, and prevent other due process rights violations around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Sim</span> Singaporean social worker

Jack Sim is the founder of the Restroom Association of Singapore, the World Toilet Organization, the World Toilet Day initiative and Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) Hub. Formerly in the construction industry, he decided to devote the rest of his life to social work after attaining financial independence at the age of 40.

Food for the Hungry is a Christian international relief, development, and advocacy organization. Food for the Hungry was founded in 1971 by Larry Ward. Food for the Hungry's stated mission for long-term development is to graduate communities of extreme poverty within 10–15 years. The organization also works in disaster relief and humanitarian response, including working with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Khazei</span> American entrepreneur and politician

Alan Khazei is an American social entrepreneur. He served as chief executive officer of City Year, an AmeriCorps national service program he co-founded with Michael Brown, his friend and roommate at Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Michele Jolin is an American social entrepreneur and policymaker. She is the CEO and co-founder of Results for America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to using evidence-based practices to get results-driven solutions. She is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on building a policy environment to support social entrepreneurship. She was appointed by President Obama in December 2010 to be a member of the White House Council for Community Solutions. In 2016, Jolin was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Rebecca Onie is the co-founder with Rocco J Perla of The Health Initiative, a nationwide effort to spur a new conversation about - and new investments in - health. In 2017, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine as a nationally recognized leader in the intersection of social determinants, population health, and healthcare delivery. Onie is also the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Emerita of Health Leads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eric Smidt</span> American billionaire businessman

Eric L. Smidt is an American businessman. He is chairman and CEO of Harbor Freight Tools, which operates over 1,400 retail hardware stores in 48 states and generates $7 billion in sales as of 2023.

GlobalGiving is 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in the United States that provides a global crowdfunding platform for grassroots charitable projects. Since 2002, more than 1.6 million donors on GlobalGiving have donated more than $750 million to support more than 33,000 projects in 175 countries.

Andreas Heinecke is a social entrepreneur and the creator of Dialogue in the Dark. He is the first Ashoka Fellow for Western Europe and a Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Global Fellow. He is also the founder of Dialogue Social Enterprise and an honorary professor and Chair of Social Business at the EBS University of Business and Law, Wiesbaden, Germany.

ClassDojo is an educational technology company. It connects primary school teachers, students and families through communication features, such as a feed for photos and videos from the school day, and messaging that can be translated into more than 35 languages. It also enables teachers to note feedback on students' skills and creates a portfolio for students, so that families can be aware of school activities outside of meeting with teachers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ashoka (non-profit organization)</span> International organization

Ashoka is an American-based nonprofit organization that promotes social entrepreneurship by connecting and supporting individual social entrepreneurs.

Bir Silgi Bir Kalem is a Turkish children's charity.

Silicon Valley Education Foundation (SVEF) is a non-profit organization serving Silicon Valley. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the SVEF creates resources and programs for students and educators in Silicon Valley in Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Risher</span> American businessman, CEO of Lyft

John David Risher is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Worldreader, a non-profit organization that aims to get children reading so they can reach their potential, and the co-founder of #HalfMyDAF whose goal is to inspire more philanthropic giving.

References

  1. "Charles Best". Global Teacher Prize. May 16, 2023. Archived from the original on January 2, 2024. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  2. Bobrow, Emily (August 27, 2021). "Charles Best Knows What Teachers Need". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on February 15, 2023. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  3. "Course in Exponential Fundraising". Harvard Kennedy School. Archived from the original on 2014-03-10. Retrieved 2016-08-27.
  4. Mac, Ryan (2012-09-18). "DonorsChoose's Charles Best: Pioneering Citizen Philanthropy". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-08-27.
  5. Tyre, Peg (2014-10-02). "Beyond School Supplies: How DonorsChoose is Crowdsourcing Real Education Reform". Fast Company. Retrieved 2016-08-27.
  6. Abrams, Sarah (2013-11-26). "New Frontier Awards Celebrate Public Service". Harvard Kennedy School. Retrieved 2016-08-27.
  7. Best, Charles. "ashoka.org".