The notion that "people respond to incentives" is a basic principle of economics, but, as this blog has discussed previously, it is a relatively controversial proposition when the "people" involved are K-12 students.  But I think these criticisms will largely fall by the wayside if we start seeing more broadly-based success stories.  For all the money that is spent on motivating students to achieve in certain scholastic areas, offering kids incentives is probably one of the most cost-effective ways to realize whatever vision one might have for education.  After all, kids tend to have less money than adults, so a $1000 incentive is likely to mean a lot to a child.

Indeed, directly incentivizing student achievement allows individual donors to foment widescale educational change.  Last spring, we highlighted one of our donors who had an entire school competing to win $250 in prize money by writing the best essay on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.   Many of our donors have since pledged gifts that incentivize things like college preparedness, social entrepreneurship, social studies achievement, career planning, or (as we highlighed in a blog post about our Chicago launch event) recognizing the importance of passing the basketball.  (Sign up or login to view these gifts).  

Part of our mission is for individuals at all income levels to change the face of the educational philanthropic landscape. My guess is that direct incentives to students will play a large role in the fulfillment of that mission, and will play an outsize role in the future of charitable giving.

OK, here's the real scoop: we've fallen a little bit behind on the blogging front because we've been really busy here at The Generation Project.  First and foremost, we've been working hard getting things ready for the launch of the community section of our website next week.  Over the past few weeks, we've been working with our amazing web design company, 365 Interactive Design, to put the finishing touches on a fully-functional, enterprise-level donor application and custom social networking platform that will allow donors to connect directly with students and educators.  The site looks great, and we look forward to unveiling it for all of you in the near future.  Importantly, 365 has built our community platform so that it simultaneously serves our organization's present needs and can be built upon in the future.

Second, The Generation Project team has been in Washington, DC, laying the groundwork for both our launch in this region and for our nationwide launch tour.  We hope to have some exciting news to share on the launch tour front later this week, so stay tuned.

Finally, we've been continuing our charitable work through our pilot programs in New York and Detroit.  Today, we completed implementation of the final gift in our pilot program--a donation of $500 worth of athletic equipment at Duke Ellington Conservatory in Detroit--and we will have pictures and stories to share shortly.

The next few weeks promise to be very exciting at The Generation Project, but we do promise to get back to blogging more regularly.  After all, with no new Susan Boyle videos forthcoming for awhile, you need something to do with your time.

TGP: Tell us a little bit about your gift.
Salam: One of my greatest passions is Middle East politics, specifically the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. In my opinion, very few people in this country have very basic information or knowledge about this conflict. Being Palestinian, this conflict is personally very important to me, and the goal of my gift was to give students an opportunity to obtain more knowledge about this topic. Specifically, my gift consisted of 4 prizes, 1 grand prize of $100, and 3 prizes of $50 each, the prizes would be awarded to the best essays that proposed a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.

TGP: You took a relatively active role in carrying out your gift, as you traveled to the school where it was being implemented both to give the students some background information on the topic and to present the grand prize to the winner. Why the hands-on approach?
Salam: I wanted to give the students an opportunity to ask me any questions they specifically had for me. I do not have any formal training on the crisis, but since it is my passion, I do try to stay as knowledgeable and up to date on the subject, so I wanted to make myself available to the students so that they could maybe clarify some questions or issues they were having with understanding the history of the conflict. Also, it was personally meaningful to me to see the kids who were affected by my gift!

TGP: You chose Carlton Littlejohn as the winner of the essay competition. What did you like about his essay?
Salam: Carlton displayed a level of understanding of the crisis that really stood out to me. He was able to discuss the history of the conflict and present a well thought out, and realistic solution to the crisis. Carlton proposed a two-state solution, with the Palestinians getting the West Bank and Gaza and Israel retaining its land along pre-1967 borders, with the possibility of equal land-swaps to be negotiated by the two parties. His essay also called for a neutral arbiter to enforce the solution, such as the UN or a mutually agreed-upon third country. Really, the ideas in Carlton's essay were as good and as realistic as any that have been put forward so far by experts on the conflict.

TGP: Now, you actually ended up donating even more than you had originally anticipated, and you still have kids competing for the runner-ups' prizes. Tell us about that.
Salam: Well, after reading all of the essays, I realized that the majority of the students had really great ideas, but it was difficult for me to distinguish a lot of the essays because many students still didn’t have a solid understanding of many of the facts about the conflict. That’s understandable because it is an incredibly difficult subject to grasp. I loved their ideas, and I wanted to read more, so I decided to donate several books to the school's library--which wasn't in the original plan, but I was happy to do--and allow the students to submit a revised essay after having access to more information about the conflict.

TGP: Is this your first time giving to low-income schools? How did you find the experience?
Salam: Yes, this was my first time donating a gift to a low-income school. It was an amazing experience. I felt that the students were really interested in the subject, asked great questions, and were extremely excited when I returned to award the gift.

TGP: Thank you!

To see Salam's gift in action, from start to finish, check out the video below, and check out student-blogger Jada Wright's post on Salam's essay contest!

A few weeks ago in Marcus Garvey Academy, we learned about the conflict in the Middle East. Our history teacher gave us a few notes about the Palestinians and the people in Israel and what they were going through in the Middle East. She also told us some of their history; but not all of it. The following week, Mr. Salam Salman [editor's note: the donor!] came to talk to us more about the conflict and how they were dealing with it. He also told us more about the history. He said that no one knew who were the first people in that piece of land, and how researchers couldn’t go back in time and try to figure that out. After his visit, our principle told us that we were going to be participating in an essay contest and our topic was the Middle East. The first place winner was someone from our eighth grade class. The conflict in the Middle East was an interesting topic to learn about and write about.

It’s a sad time for Detroit. Some very good schools are being shuttered, including three in our own Detroit pilot program. Many of these schools anchored their neighborhoods for years, and their communities rightly mourn their closing. But while it’s not pretty or popular to close neighborhood schools, the reality is that Bobb had little choice. According to the Detroit Free Press, the 23 schools currently on the chopping block were built for 19,275 students but currently hold only 7,095. The steady decline in Detroit’s population means that it has excess infrastructure, and it doesn’t make financial sense to keep operating that infrastructure indefinitely.

But while Bobb is probably doing what he has to do financially, the education business is not merely about the balance sheet. Closing these 23 schools means the forced transfer of their 7,095 students to new schools, and this will inevitably be difficult for families and children. Moving students to new schools means numerous adjustments—changes in commutes, daily routines, and, for many kids, seeing an unfamiliar face at the front of the classroom.

Students could also lose access to certain opportunities they grew used to at their old schools. Perhaps the old school had a chess club, a baseball team, or an annual field trip that the new school doesn’t or can’t afford to offer. Indeed, it could be something as simple as books they don’t have anymore. When I went to Detroit’s Wayne Elementary to talk to kids about one of our donors’ gifts of a Magic Tree House book set, one little girl was particularly excited. It turned out that she’d read books from the Magic Tree House series at her old school across town, but when her family moved, she’d lost the opportunity to read them in class. Even simple things like that can be tremendously important for a kid, and hopefully students’ educational experiences will not be lost in the financial restructuring.

Detroit’s focus now has to be on student achievement and doing whatever needs to be done to raise both the graduation rates and achievement levels of Detroit Public School students. Perhaps combining resources in fewer school buildings will allow students’ educational experiences to improve, and perhaps Mr. Broad’s money for strategy and assessment will help the system better manage its finances. But the Detroit upheaval should also be a call to action for people across the country who want to make a difference in the city. A gift through The Generation Project is unlikely to save the school system, get it out of debt, or resurrect the Motor City. But if a small gift—art supplies, a set of books, or sports equipment—can make even a few children’s transition to new schools easier, it will be an important gift indeed.