Founder of DonorsChoose.org to give ethics talk
January 22, 2013
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Charles Best |
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, will speak Feb. 7 as part of the Purdue University Series on Corporate Citizenship and Ethics.
Best will speak on philanthropy and innovation at 7 p.m. in Fowler Hall, Stewart Center.
The talk, which is free and open to the public, is presented by the College of Education's James F. Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship and the Krannert School of Management.
DonorsChoose.org is a nonprofit organization that provides a simple way for people to help public school teachers. Teachers post classroom project requests, and donors can pick the projects they want to support. Every donor gets photographs and thank-you letters from the classroom he or she chooses to help.
DonorsChoose.org has been given the Amazon.com Nonprofit Innovation Award and was chosen by the TechCrunch community as the website "most likely to make the world a better place." In 2010, Oprah Winfrey picked DonorsChoose.org as one of her "Ultimate Favorite Things." In 2011, Fast Company listed DonorsChoose.org as one of the "50 Most Innovative Companies in the World," the first time a charity received the recognition.
Fortune Magazine has twice featured Best in the "40 under 40" list of "business's hottest rising stars."
Best founded DonorsChoose.org in 2000 at Wings Academy, an alternative public high school in the Bronx, N.Y., where he taught social studies for five years. Best has a degree from Yale University.
The Purdue Series on Corporate Citizenship and Ethics began in 2003. Speakers chosen from a variety of disciplines discuss business ethics and the role citizens play in corporate ethics, providing an overview of the impact of corporate ethics on business, the economy and society as a whole.
Purdue Federal Credit Union and ArcelorMittal are sponsoring Best's talk.
Writer: Judith Barra Austin, 765-494-2432, jbaustin@purdue.edu
Source: Tim Newton, Krannert director of external relations and communications, 765-496-7271, tnewton@purdue.edu
