“Being a teacher can be a pretty isolated experience,” said Ravan Charles, founder of CrayonBox. “Bringing them together across districts, cities, and states is the goal.”

CrayonBox is a two-part non profit idea that Charles has been working on for the last two years. The startup consists of a subscription box for teachers in low-income schools, and an online platform for teachers to share resources such as lesson plans or ideas for the classroom.

“New teachers come into the field blind to all the resources they will need,” said Charles. “Many of them don’t have access to supplies without spending their own money.”

How CrayonBox works

Charles hopes to solve this issue with her Back to School Box program, which will be funded completely by donations. She explained that the idea for the program is a hybrid of a classic subscription box combined with Good360, which is essentially Amazon for nonprofits.

“Good360 posts the donations they receive and nonprofits can purchase them for just the cost of shipping,” said Charles. “It’s a good way to keep overhead low while getting access to high-quality resources.”

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Through the Back to School subscription box, teachers can sign up and receive supplies on a monthly basis. Whether it’s school supplies, cleaning supplies or basic office supplies, teachers can select what they need and a subscription box will be delivered to them each month.

Charles also hopes to launch an online platform for teachers to connect and share resources as the second part of CrayonBox.

“I think of it in a few ways, like Facebook for teachers with a lesson plan library or an online resource bank,” said Charles.

Looking forward

Charles is currently looking for a co-founder. She explained that sustaining the energy of starting a nonprofit on her own has been the hardest task so far.

“I feel like I’ve been working in a bubble,” said Charles. “I’d really like to have someone to connect with and bounce ideas off of.”

Charles is currently looking at a mixture of crowdfunding and different types of grants to help fund the project. Over the summer she received her first grant from an organization called Bread for the Journey.

She is also working with members at DoSpace to find a platform that can support her lesson plan library. She hopes to have everything running within six months to a year.

“My first goal is to do some community building. I want to host meetups and have an online platform for teachers to connect first, then the online resources,” said Charles.

“Initially, I’m trying to stay small in Omaha, but I can ultimately see it as something useful for teachers across the country.”

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Melanie Lucks is a communications intern for Silicon Prairie News and AIM Careerlink.