It's been a long competition.  But in the end, your voice counted.  You let the world know that that where a child goes to school should not determine the range of educational opportunities available to her.  You stood up for a new model of giving, in which anybody can be a philanthropist.  You voiced your confidence that educational inequality can be chipped away by individual citizens, one gift, project, and opportunity at a time.

Winning this grant is a great honor.  But of course, our work is just beginning.  Over the coming weeks, we'll be expanding to new schools across the United States.  We'll be rolling out new features on the website that will empower even more individual donors, educators, and students.  And, of course, we'll continue to implement your unique visions and help you share your passions in low-income schools and classrooms across the country.

No grant announcement involving The Generation Project would be complete without our newest tradition--an awesome picture of Chicago first graders enjoying a donor's gift of play money. (The gift helped teach these students about real-world uses for addition and subtraction).  They're excited about money.  We're excited about money.  And we're even more excited because we know this money is going to make a tremendous difference for vibrant, bright, and hilarious kids like these.  

We owe a tremendous  "thank you" to everybody who voted for us throughout this competition.  In Round One, your support allowed us to outlast over 500,000 other charities to win a $25,000 grant and make it to the final round.  In Round Two, nearly 17,500 of you voted for us, because you believe that poverty should not restrict educational opportunity, and because you believe that anybody can be a philanthropist.

An extra big "thank you" goes out to the students on college campuses across the country who worked tirelessly to campaign for The Generation Project.  Our team during the competition included 194 committed students on over 100 campuses across America, who crafted and carried out grassroots campaign strategies.  It was so inspiring to see these young leaders--the future philanthropists of the world--work so hard for our cause because of their belief that poverty should not restrict educational opportunity.

We're proud of how our team conducted our Chase campaign.  We spent a total of $50 on the campaign--to rent a microphone for the filming of our promotional video.  (The video itself was done pro bono, by the incredible Maicol Chavez).  The success of our campaign was based solely around the power of our idea, and the power of our grassroots campaigns.  

So, a big thank you goes out to all of our supporters.  From our team at Spelman and Morehouse Colleges, who put together this amazing video in support of our cause:

...to the Hope College mascot, who voted for us at a station set up by our Hope team..

...we thank you.  

What's next?  Well, we didn't win $1 million--but our work goes on. We're going to use our $25,000 Chase grant to start serving low-income schools in two new regions--New Orleans and the Bay Area.   Very soon, we'll also be launching our upgraded website, loaded with features that should allow for regular, meaningful interaction between donors and teachers.  We're going to continue to build on the momentum this contest has created, and grow our campus initiative nationwide.  And, of course, we'll continue to implement your vision for the future, in the form of opportunities you design for children growing up in poverty.

Again, on behalf of The Generation Project team, thank you. 

This time, though, the prize is much bigger: $1 million for the top vote-getter, and $100,000 for each of five runners-up.  Just like last time around, all the voting takes place on Facebook--and you can vote at the same address.  Voting starts this Friday, January 15th.  We hope you will support us!

Because we're a different kind of charity, we wanted to quickly share with you our unique plan for the Chase Million if we are lucky enough to win.  See, we're a new kind of charity--one that uses the ideas and passions of donors at all income levels to benefit low-income K-12 youth.  We exist to give children growing up in poverty the diverse educational opportunities they deserve, and the way we do that is by harnessing the diverse passions of our donors. And we think our unique giving model--where donors get to design the gifts they fund--is the future of philanthropy.

So, if we're lucky enough to win the Chase Million, we're not using it for overhead, or to "expand our operational capacity."  The money's going to go directly to children in low-income areas, and at the same time will be used to directly amplify donors' impact.  Here's our plan:

• Ÿ-With the first $250,000, we will quadruple the impact of any new gift designed through The Generation Project, allowing donors to fund four opportunities for the price of one. For example, a donor who sponsors a debate team at one urban high school could sponsor four high school teams for the same price. 
• -When the first $250,000 runs out, the next $250,000 will triple each new gift’s impact.  Donating a set of J.R.R. Tolkien books to a school library in Detroit?  With the matching fund, you could donate that same set of books to school libraries in Chicago and New York City as well!
• -With the remainder of the $1MM, we will double each gift’s impact. Sponsoring a partial college scholarship for one kid?  Give before the money runs out, and you can sponsor two for the same price!