Exponential Scholars Funds Every Open Classroom Project in North Carolina on DonorsChoose

RALEIGH, North Carolina, August 24, 2026 — Exponential Scholars, a non-profit foundation focused on unlocking hidden talent across North Carolina schools, announced today that it has funded every open DonorsChoose project in the state of North Carolina. This commitment covers 3,233 classroom projects requested by 2,466 teachers in more than 1,000 schools.

Funding is being delivered today, timed to the start of the school year. DonorsChoose, an education nonprofit, is the leading way to give to public schools. DonorsChoose vets all projects and purchases the requested materials and ships them directly to schools over the days and weeks that follow. The average North Carolina project on the platform costs $650. The distribution of funded projects skews toward historically underfunded communities, and touches over 100 of 115 public school districts in NC.

Classrooms open this month, and now they have a little more to open with. The funded projects reflect the range of what North Carolina teachers requested, including a class set of 26 steel rulers for a high school engineering program in Durham; a stove, refrigerator, and cooking equipment for a student-run coffee cart staffed by high school students with disabilities in Holly Ridge; a color printer for a second-grade classroom in Greensboro whose school can print only in black and white; and materials for a perfect-attendance incentive program at an elementary school in Morganton.

Exponential Scholars is a philanthropic organization founded in 2026 by Holly and Travis May that identifies and empowers bright future leaders across North Carolina, especially in communities that get overlooked. In addition to the DonorsChoose partnership, the foundation's early projects also include a $500,000 Idea Challenge (a statewide competition that invites students and educators to pitch ideas for improving their communities) and several grants to make a leading independent school, Cary Academy, accessible to families with incomes less than $100,000.

"The DonorsChoose partnership is the first of many initiatives we envision to support students, teachers, and schools across North Carolina," said Holly May, founder and CEO of Exponential Scholars. "We did not read the projects one by one and pick the ones we liked. We chose our home state and the timing, and the teachers had already decided everything that mattered after that. Reading three thousand requests would not have made me smarter about any one of them."

"Teachers spend their own money on their classrooms every year, and most of them never ask for help," shared former math teacher and DonorsChoose CEO Alix Guerrier. "When they submit a request on DonorsChoose, they're telling us exactly what their students need to learn. Exponential Scholars said yes to every one of those requests in North Carolina, meaning thousands of teachers start this school year with the tools to help their students thrive."