Teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District, some pictured striking in Febrary, will receive monetary gifts from an anonymous donor.
Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle
A strange email will hit the inbox of every educator in the San Francisco Unified School District on Thursday, the contents resembling a Nigerian prince scam with an implausible message of free money.
Then, subsequent messages will offer more details and finally a link to a $250 digital gift card.
District officials are aware of the imminent communication and are telling their teachers surprising instructions in this era of email phishing scams: OPEN the link. REDEEM the gift card. SPEND the money on anything you want.
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An anonymous donor has given $1.6 million to split among the nearly 6,000 teachers, teachers aides and other educators in the district to show appreciation for the jobs they do, which pencils out to $250 each, after some administrative expenses.
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The donor, who said they see little upside in sharing their identity, lives in San Francisco and said they were prompted to give the educators money because it seemed like there’s been a lot of negativity around teaching over the past decade.
“I’m kind of aware of how hard it is to be a teacher,” the donor told the Chronicle in an exclusive interview. “Hopefully they will feel seen and appreciated. That’s my goal here.”
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The money came from a career in the tech industry and the donor said they grapple with how society views that work compared to the work a teacher does.
“My salary is more than the budget of many schools,” the donor said. “I think that says a lot about our society that we compensate (a tech worker) in orders of magnitude higher than the highest paid teacher.”
The individual initiated the donation in November, contacting SPARK SF Public Schools, the nonprofit foundation for the school district, to coordinate the distribution of the money to educators.
It turns out giving a lot of money to a lot of individuals who work in public schools isn’t as easy as it might sound.
Do you send out 6,000 checks? Gift cards? Where would one get 6,000 gift cards? What about digital gift cards? How do you email them?
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It wasn’t easy, said SPARK President Ginny Fang. They finally settled on the digital gift cards and then navigated the logistics of sending them out via the work emails of all the educators.
But there remains one last and very high hurdle: convincing teachers to trust the emails. They have been told over and over in security training to be suspicious of strange emails and never click on questionable links.
“That has been the hardest thing,” Fang said. “I’m like, ‘Please click on it! ’”
The no-strings cash gift for educators was a first for SPARK, which typically raises and helps direct philanthropic funding to a variety of programs and needs within the city’s school system, including efforts to reduce absenteeism, boost literacy and expand mental health services.
The more than $16 million SPARK disperses annually comes from a range of donors, some of whom are regular givers helping support long-term efforts.
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Fang is hoping the anonymous donor’s “thank you” gift to teachers will inspire other wealthy residents to consider ways they could support city schools.
“This is about inspiring and letting other people we believe are out there the ability to give,” she said. “There’s so much wealth in our city.”
And there are so many specific needs waiting for donors who might feel a connection to them.
The district could use a lot of help navigating policy, regulation and careers related to artificial intelligence, with a donation perhaps supporting an AI expert to guide all that for a few years, Fang said.
Or maybe there’s someone who could help pay for new slick marketing materials to compete with what private schools give out, she added.
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Fang said recently she was talking to a district employee in the athletics department, who said they needed sports bras for girls, a simple thing, but one critical for playing sports.
A $50 donation would provide a student with essential athletic gear, like a sports bra, uniform or other equipment so they can participate, she said.
Or they could support the 35 elementary school Rainbow clubs, which foster belonging and “rainbow-filled” age-appropriate activities for $1,000 each per year, or $35,000 for all of them, Fang said.
“Those that are close to the work see how hard it is, the challenges kids bring into the classroom,” she said. “It doesn’t take that much to make a difference compared to the amount of wealth.”
The anonymous giver said the direct donation to teachers had an appeal, to know where the money was going. SPARK was there to coordinate that, earning the administrative fees to distribute the funds and handle all the logistics, they said.
Some people don’t donate because they resent that fee. Or they believe they earned the vast amount of money the tech industry paid them, the donor added.
“Our society tells me all this is mine. I deserve this,” the tech worker said of their wealth. I can’t hold that with a straight face for a moment.”
The donor is not among the richest of the rich in San Francisco or Silicon Valley. The donation represents about 5% of their family’s net worth, they said.
“What do I need? I need enough to eat and one day send kids to college,” the donor said. “Everything beyond that? My goal is to give away in the next 10 to 20 years.”