Dear MC2 Community, thank you for:
- Your generous giving on Giving Tuesday, before, and after!
- Supporting QED, where 135 kids produced remarkable projects that left judges–PhD students, mathematicians, postdocs, outstanding school teachers–saying: “The students were once again, awesome!” and “[The best part was] being able to see so many fascinating problems/projects that students worked on. Some of them blew me away!”
- Allowing me to say, “If you can arrange for a van to circulate to your schools and pick up kids for math circles, our community will raise the money to pay for it,” yesterday at a gathering of elementary school principals in Little Village.
- Giving MC2 the support to visit Back of the Yards, Ashburn, and Morgan Park next week with the confidence that we will be able to open at least one new math circle this fall!
According to #ILGive, MC2 is a small non-profit, which they define as an organization with a budget less than $2,000,000, and I can assure you that we qualify. Because of the commitment of our community, we are receiving a $2,000 prize from #ILGive for “Most Unique Donors by Budget” (small non-profit category)!
On Giving Tuesday we raised $21,000, and with this $2,000 prize we were within $7,000 of our Giving Tuesday goal. People have kept on giving, and we have raised $4,000 more in the past week and a half; we are hoping to top $30k by the end of December–in other words, it’s not too late to give! See our December Drive page.
I was busily posting about our fundraiser on GT and tagging many friends and former students. Facebook decided that my activity was ‘unusual’ and booted me out of my account! Suffice to say as the leader of a non-profit, Giving Tuesday is not a great day to be locked out of the largest social network in the world.
Fortunately, I tapped into my teacher social network, and while Facebook does not have phone, email, or chat support, I had my secret weapon–former student support. I want to thank Adam Fishman, now Facebook employee, who got me back into my account, and who also gave a generous gift to our campaign. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that PJ Karafiol, our board chair, learned of my struggles and reached out to my former students on Facebook and raised $1,600 in my name while I was in Facebook purgatory–and which he then MATCHED.
So thanks everyone, thanks Adam, and thanks PJ!







