Arrington Throws Down The Gauntlet And I Reply

So I am a little late to this news, but on Monday Mike Arrington threw down the gauntlet in the Donors Choose Challenge with the words that "fred wilson must be stopped". Seems that Mike wants to win and he’s not happy about being in third place in the technology category. But Mike got one thing wrong, it’s not me that must be stopped, it’s you all, to date 50 readers who have dipped into their pockets and donated some money to a public school teacher’s classroom.

I want to emphasize something that most of you probably don’t know about Donor’s Choose. The public school teachers use the Donor’s Choose procurement system to "buy" the supplies they need. Their shopping cart becomes the "cause" that is funded, and when the total is reached, the supplies are purchased by Donors Choose and sent to the teacher’s classroom. This is not about sending money to teachers. This is about sending supplies to classrooms.

Now back to the competition. Mike’s offered to match each and every donation that his readers make to his challenge. That’s very generous and I may have to do the same, but I won’t do it to garner more donations. I have a different plan for that.

The top two challenges in terms of total donors get to share lunch with Jerry Yang, the CEO of Yahoo! Considering I am in second place right now, by a pretty nice lead, I am a good bet to win that.

Donors Choose has asked and gotten approval for me to assign that seat at lunch if I win it. So here’s what I am going to do. Anyone who has given to Donors Choose through my challenge and wants that seat at lunch should send me an email identifying who you are, what cause you donated to, why you picked it, and why you should get the seat at lunch. The amount of money is not important, but please make it at least as much as a CD (and not a Radiohead CD).

If you’ve already given, you can still send me an email. At the end of the challenge, I will sort through all the emails and pick a winner based on the cause you picked, why you picked it, and why you need a seat at lunch with Jerry.

Please remember that if Mike’s generous matching offer or Kara’s cute kids beat me for second place, all of this will be moot. So get your friends to give too. This should be fun.