Blogger Challenge update (day 23): where we are now, and where we can go.

In the last 22.5 days, ScienceBloggers and their generous readers have:

• Mounted twenty challenges to fund educational projects through DonorsChoose.
• Met (and exceeded!) the targets in five of those challenges (for which I issue a heartfelt “w00t!” to the readers of Retrospectacle, Deep Sea News, evolgen, Signout, and Pharyngula).
• Secured every last cent of the $15,000 in matching funds put up by Seed.
• Secured more than $2,000 from the Richard Dawkins Foundation to fund classroom projects in the Pharyngula challenge.
• Raised $43,079 so far (before even counting that $15,000 in matching funds).

This is nice progress … but we have 8 more days until the drive wraps up on October 31, and I think we can do more.

I’m away from my scanner, so I’m not going to hit you with my hand-drawn bar graphs. Instead, some quick numbers:

• Fifteen of our challenges are still open
• Of those, three are below 30% of their target, five are between 30% and 49% of their target, four are between 50% and 70% of their target, and three are above 70% of their target.
• Four challenges (here, here, here, and here) are within $400 of their goals.

Why should you care how close we are to meeting these goals? For each challenge where the goal is met, DonorsChoose will put up a 10% “completion bonus” to fund even more teacher-proposed educational projects! And that means even more kids will get the kind of engaging learning experiences they deserve.
As if that isn’t enough incentive:

• Dave and Greta Munger are putting up a 10% match for every dollar donated to their challenge — of their own money!
• Chad is offering some additional incentives for donations to his challenge, including a dog dialogue.
• The sprogs will still create custom artwork for donations of $25 to my challenge. You can even display it on your own blog, as generous donor Leah has done with these pictures of frogs.
• A donation of any size to any of our challenges is all it takes to enter in the last weekly drawing for T-shirts, mugs, books, and subscriptions to Seed (as well as the end of the drive drawing for that iPod Nano).

Even if you can only give a little, what we can do when we put our efforts together makes a big difference for the kids.
Continue your awesomeness! It looks good on you.