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MacLife.com is stoked to participate in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge this year. But right now we're woefully low on the leaderboard of Tech Blogs. Help us raise money for public schools, and you could win some awesome prizes courtesy of our wonderful advertisers. Here's how:

DonorsChoose is a site where teachers submit proposals for which they need funding. That can be anything: books, art supplies, technology, field trips, whatever. But it's a specific project. Donors then search (by age, school's location, amount of funding needed, subject matter, all kinds of criteria) for a proposal that tugs at their heartstrings, and they give money to fund part or all of it. If the project is fully funded, the teacher receives the money, the kids get a cool learning experience, and the donors get cute thank-you notes and photos. I've blogged about it before.

The Blogger Challenge lets, um, bloggers and other Webby types set up these Giving Pages, a list of proposals they'd like to see happen. Then they blog about it, their readers give money to those proposals, and DonorsChoose tracks each blog/site's total on a leaderboard. The challenge runs every October, and I've had fun donating in the past but this is the first year I'm in it on the blogger side. It's cool.

Oh, yes, the prizes. Many of the participating blogs give stuff away to their readers (or do silly stunts like shaving their head when a goal is reached, things like that) to encourage participation. And I have access to a lot of sweet tech gear and a lot of awesome, generous tech companies, so I got my grovel on and am securing a sweet heap of prizes to reward anyone who donates to a project on our Giving Page.

How it works:
1. Visit this page, the MacLife.com Challenge 08 page at DonorsChoose.org
2. Peruse the projects there and make a donation to one.
3. DonorsChoose sends you an email confirmation. Forward that to me at susie at maclife dot com. I will send you back a quick confirmation that I received it and you are entered.
4. When the Challenge ends (Oct. 31 -- I will take entries until November 1, 2008, 11:59pm PST), I will put all the names into a drawing. One entry per person -- donate to as many projects as you like, but I'll just enter you once.
5. Winners will get to select from the prize pool in the order their names were drawn.

Prize list is here, will continue to be updated. I've also done a FAQ here, a general intro to the whole thing here, and today I added an update with a Top 10 list of why you should give. Questions?

I know it's a bad time to ask people for money. I really do know this. But times are tough for schools and teachers and kids too, and if everyone who reads MacLife.com could spare just a dollar or two to help them out, we could make a real difference, corny as it sounds. I'm incredibly proud of the work DonorsChoose does and feel privileged to help them out. If any of you know a teacher who spends their own money on classroom supplies just because they really care, think about them and toss in a few bucks if you can. (And make sure they know about DonorsChoose!)

Thanks, everyone.