How a financial donation will fund thousands of NC teacher classroom projects

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Thousands of North Carolina teachers are getting their wishes answered at the start of the new school year thanks to a financial donation worth millions of dollars.

Exponential Scholars, a non-profit foundation, announced Monday it has funded every open North Carolina project on the DonorsChoose website. The group’s donation will cover approximately 3,000 classroom projects requested by around 2,300 teachers in more than 1,000 North Carolina schools.

“Teachers spend their own money on their classrooms every year, and most of them never ask for help,” DonorsChoose CEO Alix Guerrier said in a news release. “When they submit a request on DonorsChoose, they’re telling us exactly what their students need to learn. Exponential Scholars said yes to every one of those requests in North Carolina, meaning thousands of teachers start this school year with the tools to help their students thrive.”

The exact amount of the donation is still being determined. But Exponential Scholars said the average project requested by a North Carolina teacher is around $650. At 3,000 projects, the donation could be around $1.9 million or more.

The announcement of the donation coincides with the first day of classes for most of North Carolina’s 1.5 million public school students.

A 2025 study found that North Carolina teachers spend an average of $1,632 out of their own pocket on classroom supplies. Sometimes they turn to DonorsChoose for help.

Since 2000, DonorsChoose has allowed teachers to crowdsource funding for classroom projects. The website has raised $1.9 billion for classrooms nationally.

Locally, the Exponential Scholars donation will fund projects such as:

The projects cover more than 100 of the state’s 115 school districts. The projects are skewed toward what Exponential Scholars calls historically underfunded communities.

DonorsChoose vetted all the projects and will purchase the requested materials and ships them directly to schools over the days and weeks that follow, Exponential Scholars said in a news release.

“The DonorsChoose partnership is the first of many initiatives we envision to support the students, teachers, and schools across North Carolina,” Holly May, founder and CEO of Exponential Scholars, said in the news release. “We did not read the projects and pick the ones we liked.

“We chose our home state and the timing, and the teachers had already decided everything that mattered after that. Reading 3,000 requests would not have made me smarter about any one of them.”

Exponential Scholars was founded in 2026 by May and her husband, Travis. The couple have a history of financial philanthropy, including a program to pay the cost of attending Cary Academy for families making less than $100,000 a year.

Holly May said she wants to give students the opportunities to succeed like she had received as a child growing up in rural North Carolina. Seeing her potential, her parents had gotten May into Cary Academy on a full-ride scholarship.

May credits the opportunities she received at Cary Academy with propelling her to Harvard College and a successful business career.

Exponential Scholars says its goal is to identify bright future leaders across North Carolina, especially in communities that get overlooked.

The group is currently running the North Carolina Idea Challenge through Oct. 4 for students and educators across the state to submit an idea to improve their community. Winners receive a $1,000 prize. More information on this contest is available: https://ideachallengenc.org/

This story was originally published August 24, 2026 at 12:13 PM with the headline “How a financial donation will fund thousands of NC teacher classroom projects.”