Quotes from Charles Best

We believe in the wisdom of the front lines.

For my 9th birthday, my only wish was to eat like a farmer boy. I had devoured 'The Little House on the Prairie' book series and wanted to be like Almanzo Wilder, the protagonist of 'Farmer Boy,' one of the later installments in the 'Little House' series.

Whether you're saying 'thank you' to friends, family members, customers, or a hiring manager who interviewed you for a job, the case in favor of gratitude is both altruistic and pragmatic.

We think the ability to rattle off people you are grateful to and thankful to is often sort of a proxy for openness to learning from others.

I had really good relationship with my students; it definitely took me a few months before I had my students' respect.

The most incredible businesses are started by entrepreneurs who relentlessly pursue their passion, but passion works best with a thoughtful, ambitious-yet-grounded business plan.

I think it's the strength of the idea that's made Donors Choose work, not me. I mean, I'm determined, and I work hard, but so does everyone else.

We're thrilled to be a part of PNC's longstanding commitment to early childhood learning. Their generosity will help us expand the DonorsChoose.org platform to serve Head Start classrooms nationwide, ensuring that many more pre-K teachers have resources they need to give their students a solid educational foundation.

Donorschoose.org is the one place where somebody with $10 gets the same level of impact and feedback from the recipients that Bill Gates gets when he's making a million-dollar gift.

We are so humbled and grateful to Google for their devotion to our teachers and students.

To take on the jobs of tomorrow, students must become more than good test takers. They need to become makers who design, sketch, build, and prototype. And their classrooms will need more than a chalkboard and a set of textbooks.

We've heard people say that teachers have no business going rogue and trying to select their own books, technology, and classes - and citizens have no business deciding what is worthy. We believe in teachers. We believe in the wisdom of the crowd.

If you track your organization's creativity by the number of brainstorms on your calendar, you're missing out. It's more important to capture those unplanned sparks of inspiration that so often come when we're cooking dinner, taking a shower, or commuting to work.

Donors are sick of writing that $200 check to the Red Cross and not knowing whether it goes for the executive director's salary or the office rent.

At DonorsChoose.org, you can give as little as $1 and get the same level of choice, transparency, and feedback that is traditionally reserved for someone who gives millions. We call it citizen philanthropy.

One thing that gets missed a lot is that DonorsChoose is merely a place where teachers post wish lists. That doesn't do justice to the level of innovation that we see taking place on our site.

In the sixth grade, I planned to start my own business making custom fishing lures.

I get my share of 'cold' requests via LinkedIn from people who are launching non-profit or for-profit ventures and who request a meeting to get my input or help. I wish I could say yes to all of them, but given limited bandwidth, I say yes to the subset who've written a compelling description of their work and who are underrepresented.

We really are based on this idea that teachers have all this pent-up classroom expertise and that if we could just empower them to come up with micro-solutions, they're going to come up with smarter ideas than anybody would at the top.

My colleagues and I were always having the same conversation in the teachers lunchroom about books we wanted our students to read, a field trip we knew would really bring a subject matter to life... And most of us would go into our own pockets to buy just paper and pencils.

We all remember special days at school, whether it was going on a field trip, doing a science experiment, or performing in a school play.

An art project, a hands-on science experiment, or a special field trip can transcend textbooks and flash cards. No one knows this better than those teaching students with autism.

Our brains are designed to solve some of our most complex problems when we're distracted by routine habits.

Our ideological dilemmas won't ever be solved by machines.