Who owns the materials obtained via DonorsChoose.org? What if the teacher moves to a new school?
Generally, materials are considered "property of the classroom" and are delivered to the teacher's school at time of funding. If a teacher submits a project when working at School A, but the proposal is funded when that teacher has moved to School B, materials should be delivered to School B.
If a teacher requests materials while teaching at school A, and then leaves school A and becomes ineligible to receive materials from DonorsChoose.org, we will not move forward with the project. Unfortunately, projects cannot be transferred from one teacher to another.
Control and use of resources should be dictated by the intent of the donor(s) who chose to fund a particular project at DonorsChoose.org and who must receive a thank-you package in response to his/her gift.
In cases when the teacher has already returned the thank-you package to DonorsChoose.org and he/she is moving schools, the teacher (as steward of the funded resource) and the principal should defer to the individual project essay as a representation of donor intent in order to decide where the materials should reside. For example:
-If the project promises that students will be given a particular resource (for example, "Dictionaries for At-Home Use"), the intent of the donor is to do just that, and the students should personally receive the resources.
-If a project describes a particular school in some detail, and makes a request that could come from any teacher at that school (for example, "Dictionaries for 3rd Graders in New Orleans Elementary School"), the intent of the donor would be best honored by keeping the resources at that school, even if the teacher moves on.
-If a project describes a unique activity conceived by the teacher (for example, "Dictionaries for My New Way of Teaching Vocabulary"), the intent of the donor would be best honored by attaching the resources to that teacher's classroom, even if he/she changes schools. The teacher's new school must be eligible to participate in DonorsChoose.org.
DonorsChoose.org cannot and will not intervene in cases of conflict or ambiguity. The principal and teacher must decide how best to honor the intent of the donor(s) who funded a given project, within the bounds of each school's policy on the disposition of donated resources.
