On the last episode of Breadpig Adventures, our hero donated $1776.74 to Reddit's Restoring Truthiness campaign on DonorsChoose.org to congratulate them for breaking Hilary Clinton's record for donations within just a few hours. We were proud then, but just a week later the campaign is sitting at over $270,000 and actually convinced Colbert (and Stewart) to hold a rally in DC. Uh, I guess our baby's all grown up!
Yesterday, several of the higher ups at DonorsChoose stopped by Reddit to thank the community in the best way possible: by becoming part of it for the day. The DonorsChoose Ask Me Anything collected almost 900 comments full of questions, typical Reddit humor, and tons of love. For those of you who didn't catch it or don't want to dig through all of it, here are the highlights.
Redditors were curious about the reaction at DC when the Restoring Truthiness campaign was launched:
In true Reddit fashion, the thread then immediately turned to hookers and surgery. Luckily, instead of having a pregnants the DonorsChoose folks maintained an excellent sense of humor throughout it all, which only endeared them to Redditors more:
Mutual respect was the tone that dominated the AMA, but the silliness and warm fuzzies didn't stop the Reddit community from asking tough questions of their latest beneficiary. Luckily, DonorsChoose stepped up to the challenge and gave honest, thorough answers.
They also explained their vetting process, geeked out about server stats, and even doled out some advice to Redditors interested in education. Additionally, they posted some yummy statistics, like the fact that 916 of the 1,208 projects Redditors have contributed to have been fully funded! They even showed us a funny picture of their CEO in a mustache. If that's not transparency, I don't know what is.
All in all, DonorsChoose proved why they were a great match for Reddit and Breadpig: they're an organization with a huge impact that nevertheless manages to maintain their efficiency, transparency, willingness to innovate, and sense of humor. For that, we salute them!
And perhaps what sums it all up best is this:
Hear that? You're super like heroes, Reddit!