But one nonprofit foundation stepped in to help ease that burden.
Exponential Scholars announced Monday it funded every open North Carolina project on the DonorsChoose website, which connects teachers in high-need communities to donors for the supplies kids need. The group’s $2.25 million donation will cover more than 3,200 classroom projects across more than 1,000 schools in North Carolina.
Exponential Scholars was founded in 2025 by self-proclaimed “quiet philanthropist” Holly May, who serves as its president and CEO. She grew up in rural North Carolina in the 1990s, where her hometown had a population of just 2,000 and only one elementary school.
A full financial-aid scholarship to an independent school, followed by a full ride to Harvard College, and a business career in San Francisco, shaped May’s belief that “good fortune comes with a duty to pay it forward.” She and her husband, Travis, returned to North Carolina to raise their family and launched the foundation to support gifted students in overlooked communities across her home state.
This gift comes at a time when the amount teachers spend continues to grow. According to a 2025 study by consumer platform CouponBirds, teachers in the state spend an average of $1,632 of their own money each year to stock their classrooms. That’s a 22% year-over-year jump, and the second-highest figure in the country. Pennsylvania beats that total by $5, and the national average was $1,021. In that same survey, 95% of teachers reported dipping into their own wallets for classroom materials, and 82% said their classrooms would suffer without it.
Meanwhile, teacher pay hasn’t kept up. North Carolina’s average teacher salary for the 2023–24 school year was $58,292, ranking the state 43rd nationally and landing nearly $14,000 below the national average, according to the National Education Association. The Economic Policy Institute estimates teachers earn just 73 cents for every dollar made by similarly educated professionals.
This practice of clearing teacher supply wishlists is called “flash-funding,” and another notable example came in 2015, when Stephen Colbert teamed up with two organizations to cover roughly 1,000 South Carolina classroom projects with an $800,000 donation. Colbert has served on DonorsChoose’s board of directors.
Three years later, cryptocurrency company Ripple funded every open project on the site nationwide, some 35,647 campaigns, with a gift valued at $29 million.
DonorsChoose was founded in 2000 by former teacher Charles Best, and has become one of the biggest pipelines for classroom needs across the U.S. More than 6 million supporters have contributed nearly $2 billion to more than 3 million projects, supporting more than 92,000 schools. In North Carolina specifically, more than 143,000 projects have been funded, according to the DonorsChoose site.
For the North Carolina teachers whose requests were sitting open this week—for books, pencils, lab equipment, and more—the gift means those supplies are on their way. Now they don’t have to tap into their own savings to cover necessary supplies for their job.
“I still believe in the American Dream,” May wrote. “Mine came true: work hard, use your gifts, and it pays off…and you leave your kids more room for ambition and optimism than you had.”
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