Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has become the first big name to accept a charity challenge via social media to help raise money for U.S. schools, a report said.
Schoola, an organization that helps raise money for schools by selling slightly used apparel, initiated the new campaign. It calls on others by name, just like the ice bucket challenge that raised awareness of Lou Gehrig’s disease last year. In the 2014 campaign, people dumped ice water over their heads and dared others to participate, Business Insider said.
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Last week Schoola founder and CEO Stacey Boyd launched the #Passthebag Challenge to collect women and kids’ clothes by nominating Sandberg, Michelle Kydd Lee of Creative Arts Agency, entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, the website said.
In the challenge, people request donation bags that are sent to them with pre-paid postage. The recipients then fill the bags with “gently used” women’s or kids clothing and mail it back. Schoola sells the items and donates 40% of the money raised to a school of the recipient’s choice, Business Insider said.
Boyd, a former inner city teacher and principal, started Schoola in 2012 with five San Francisco schools. Today, there are 6, 300 schools participating from all over the country. For instance, a school in Harlem used Schoola to build a playground, while one in San Francisco used it to help save its art program, a Schoola spokesperson said, according to the website.
Sandberg, a well-known philanthropist and supporter of education, immediately took up the challenge and nominated a few others. One of them, Anna Fieler, executive vice president of marketing for ShopStyle, immediately accepted, Business Insider said.
The ice bucket challenge went viral on social media in the summer of 2014.
