DonorsChoose enables teachers across the United States to request funding for classroom projects, ranging from basic supplies to specialized equipment. Although most projects are eventually approved, this high overall approval rate can mask important disparities in which types of projects succeed. This project, titled “Funding the Gap”, addresses a decision-oriented question: which project characteristics are systematically associated with approval, and which types of projects face a higher risk of rejection? Using historical DonorsChoose data, the analysis begins with a correlation-based overview and then examines how approval outcomes vary with project cost, project scale, teacher experience, grade level, and subject category. These factors act as observable signals of deeper constraints such as financial risk, proposal maturity, and donor preferences. The goal is not to evaluate individual teachers, but to identify consistent structural patterns that can inform fairer platform design, stronger onboarding support, and more targeted funding strategies for projects that are currently disadvantaged.
Decision question: Which project characteristics are most strongly associated with approval on DonorsChoose, and which types of projects are systematically disadvantaged?
Audience: DonorsChoose product, program and policy teams who design submission guidance and funding campaigns.
Purpose and success: The analysis is successful if it identifies structural patterns behind approval outcomes and translates them into actionable recommendations to improve fairness and platform support.
Building on the correlation overview, this analysis addresses the following decision-focused questions:
Approximately 85% of projects on DonorsChoose are approved, indicating broad platform accessibility.
This baseline motivates the following correlation-based overview.
This heatmap provides a high-level overview of how key numeric project characteristics are linearly associated with project approval. It serves as a diagnostic starting point for the analysis rather than a final explanation.
Importantly, all correlations are small in magnitude. This indicates that approval decisions are not driven by any single numeric factor. Instead, these results highlight where the most relevant signals lie and motivate a deeper examination of how cost, experience and project scale behave across different ranges and contexts.
The following sections therefore build directly on this overview by first examining the strongest negative signal—project cost—and then investigating the strongest positive signal—teacher experience—before exploring how these factors interact.
The correlation overview identified project price as the strongest negatively associated numeric feature. This plot examines how approval rates change across cost levels.
Project cost therefore acts as a consistent constraint on approval, although it does not determine outcomes on its own. The next section examines whether teacher experience can mitigate this cost disadvantage.
The correlation overview showed teacher experience as the strongest positively associated numeric feature. This visualization examines how approval rates change across experience levels.
Teacher experience improves approval likelihood, but it does not fully offset the disadvantages associated with high project cost. The next section examines how cost and experience interact.
The previous sections showed that project cost is negatively associated with approval and that teacher experience is positively associated. This heatmap examines how both factors operate jointly.
Teacher experience improves approval likelihood primarily for low- and mid-cost projects. At high cost levels, project price becomes the dominant constraint.
The correlation overview indicated a weak negative association between requested quantity and approval. This visualization examines how quantity behaves when combined with project cost.
Project scale becomes most restrictive when quantity and cost increase together, indicating that overall project burden—rather than price or quantity alone—drives lower approval probabilities.
The correlation overview focused on numeric project characteristics. This section extends the analysis to subject categories, which may also shape approval outcomes.
These patterns indicate that approval outcomes are influenced not only by project cost and scale, but also by donor preferences and perceived instructional priority across subject areas.
After examining cost, experience, scale and subject differences, this section extends the analysis to student grade levels.
These results indicate that projects serving older students face a systematic disadvantage that cannot be explained by numeric project characteristics alone.
Approval rates decline as project cost increases for all grade levels. However, the strength of this decline varies substantially by student age group, with projects for older grades experiencing sharper reductions in approval as costs rise.
This evidence indicates that projects serving older students are subject to a compounded disadvantage: they typically require higher budgets and face stricter approval thresholds as costs grow. Cost therefore amplifies existing grade-related differences in funding success.
Classroom resources directly affect what teachers can offer their students. When certain types of projects repeatedly struggle to receive funding, the result is reduced learning opportunities for specific student groups.
This analysis shows that approval outcomes are driven primarily by structural project characteristics such as cost, scale, grade level and subject category, rather than individual teacher effort alone.
Addressing these structural barriers can improve equity in access to classroom resources while preserving donor choice and platform sustainability.
This project examined which project characteristics are associated with approval outcomes on DonorsChoose. Although most projects are approved, the analysis reveals persistent and systematic differences across project cost, scale, grade level, subject category and teacher experience.
A correlation-based overview shows that no single numeric feature strongly explains approval outcomes. Project cost emerges as the strongest negative signal, while teacher experience is the strongest positive signal. However, interaction analyses demonstrate that teacher experience cannot fully offset the disadvantages associated with high project cost or large project scale.
Projects serving older students and several subject categories also experience consistently lower approval rates, indicating the presence of structural barriers rather than differences in individual proposal quality.
Overall, the findings suggest that DonorsChoose could improve equity and platform effectiveness by introducing targeted onboarding support, cost-aware project guidance, and dedicated visibility or funding pathways for high-cost and under-served projects.