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How to Support Education for Back-to-School Season 2023

Back-to-school season is right around the corner! While teachers and students are preparing for another school year, you can help them prepare for the back-to-school season by supporting charitable causes that support students and teachers.

Teachers and students often face financial challenges and lack of resources, hindering the quality of education they receive. By supporting education-focused nonprofit organizations, your business can help ensure that teachers have the necessary tools, materials, and training to deliver high-quality education, and that students have access to the resources they need to thrive.

Students from disadvantaged backgrounds often lack access to essential resources like textbooks, technology, and educational programs. To help ensure that every student has an equal opportunity to succeed, you can get involved in the cause and give back to education-focused organizations.

We are advocating for education and raising awareness for the importance of supporting teachers and students by highlighting organizations that are providing programming and resources to schools, teachers, and students in need. Here are some tactics that you can use to get involved and give back for back-to-school season.

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Education-Focused Nonprofits Making an Impact

We pulled a list of organizations that are advocating for equal opportunities amongst students and teachers to ensure that teachers are equipped to deliver quality education, and that students are successful in their studies. We encourage you to get involved in their efforts as the back-to-school season approaches.

Pencils of Promise

Pencils of Promise (EIN: 26-3618722) believes every child deserves access to quality education. They create schools, programs and global communities around the common goal of education for all. 

Pencils of Promise builds safe and healthy learning environments, full of well-trained and supported teachers, where students can reach their full potential. As a data-driven organization, they’re rigorously monitoring the effectiveness of every program, project and pilot that they implement to continuously learn and iterate on their work.

Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF)

Thurgood Marshall College Fund (EIN: 41-1750692) is a vital resource in the K-12 and higher education space. TMCF's mission is to ensure student success through scholarships, capacity building and research initiatives, innovative programs, and strategic partnerships.

By providing unparalleled access to a funnel of opportunities for students to journey to college, through college, and into a career, TMCF boasts an 80-90% graduation rate of its Scholars – compared to a 40% graduation rate for Black/AA students overall and a 62% graduation rate for all students irrespective of race/nationality or whether they attended an HBCU.

Together Educating All Children in Hospitals (TEACH)

Together Educating All Children in Hospitals (EIN: 81-3539826) is an international nonprofit that brings exciting, hands-on, educational programming to children in hospitals. Their mission is to create an outlet for children of all ages to passionately engage with the sciences through the medium of fun, interactive experiments.

Through engagement with practical science concepts, the children that TEACH works with are challenged yet empowered. They emerge comforted and confident, encouraged to successfully cope with the trials that lie before them. TEACH modules challenge children to think creatively and bring an element of fun to an otherwise monotonous day.

How Businesses Can Support Education

Everyone deserves the right to a quality education. With many schools experiencing a lack of funding, especially in high-poverty areas, it’s more important than ever to support and invest in teachers and students. 

Education is a powerful equalizer that can break the cycle of poverty and provide individuals with the tools they need to improve their lives. Investing in education not only benefits individual students, but also fosters a more inclusive and equitable society, where talent and potential are not limited by socioeconomic factors.

To get involved in the cause, your business can support and fundraise for education-focused nonprofit organizations that are working towards providing equal education opportunities for all. You can also collaborate with these nonprofit organizations to develop and implement educational programs like mentorship and internship programs, or vocational training initiatives. 

By offering funding, time, resources, and expertise, your organization can help shape the future of students and equip them with the skills and resources needed to succeed in school and their future careers.

Actionable Tactics for Education-Focused Initiatives

Supporting a vital cause like education not only helps create a positive impact for society, but it can also help your business build more loyal communities through value-alignment with your customers. Socially conscious consumers are eager to shop with brands who share the same values as them, and supporting education focused-causes and even your local school system can help consumers feel more connected to their purchases. 

You can use your platform to raise awareness for the importance of equal education opportunities. Your marketing channels are a great way to inform people about the obstacles that many schools are facing, and are a place to easily provide resources for others to get involved in the cause.

To give back during the back-to-school season, we encourage you to support the recommended nonprofits shared above. Through ShoppingGives, you can support the organizations individually, or as a group through our “Back to School: Supporting Education” cause portfolio.

Your business can spotlight the cause by running a flash giving event. You can donate an extra donation percentage, like 20% or 50%, for a 24-hour timeframe in support of a nonprofit organization that is advocating for quality education initiatives. This tactic is an easy way to capture the attention of your customers and motivate them to make a purchase.

If you want to support your local community through your brick and mortar location, you can enable donations at the point of sale that specifically support the schools or school district in your local community. Supporting your local community is a powerful way to create an even more engaging and authentic experience for your customers when making their purchase.

You could also create a specific product collection where the purchase of every product from that collection creates a donation for an education-focused nonprofit organization. This will encourage your customers to shop from that specific collection and make an impact with their purchase.

To streamline your giving initiatives, leverage the ShoppingGives’ donation technology to give back to education-focused nonprofit organizations. If your business uses the Shopify platform, you can download the ShoppingGives Donation App and begin giving within minutes. For businesses on other eCommerce platforms, you can connect with our team and learn more about getting involved.

Promote Your Involvement 

To maximize your impact around the back-to-school season, include messaging around your efforts throughout your marketing funnel. Social media, email, and onsite marketing are great ways to highlight your giving initiatives and raise awareness around the cause.

We recommend announcing your campaign through social media and email. This gives you an opportunity to tell a story around why this cause is important to your business, explain the actions that you are taking in support of the cause, and highlight any charitable organizations that you are planning to support during this time.

Learn more about how ShoppingGives can help your business get involved in this timely cause.