Pacific Beach resident Jerry Hall launched iloveschools.com nationwide in 2003 to connect teachers and schools with donors and volunteers through an online interface that matches teachers’ wishes with donors’ capabilities. The website allows, say, an Ocean Beach or Point Loma teacher to post a wish list for classroom supplies for donors to scan and, hopefully, choose to fund. Teachers can also ask for volunteer help through the website. On the giving side, donors can find a specific school and scan the teacher’s list of needs to see if they can provide the items. Or — in Craig’s List mode —a donor can post on the donation board whatever he has to offer: toner for the printer, books, computers. Businesses and volunteers can also post their services online for school districts to take advantage of. For example, a healing arts school or restaurant can post its willingness to host a fieldtrip for school children. Hall said the website gives teachers an opportunity to articulate their needs without begging parents for supplies, fundraising on their own or even pulling money out of their own pockets. “I definitely want to encourage far more participation between parents and schools but when a parent comes to the schools, the teacher shouldn’t have her hand out and say, ‘I need $20,’” Hall said. “To me, it’s separating the two.” Hall ran his own website design business, eweblab, for nine years but said he grew more interested in supporting education than churning a profit. Hall soon realized that iloveschools.com could not support itself, however, so he launched an online, for-profit business to sell school supplies at schoolsupplydrive.com. Hall uses his for-profit company to help his non-profit organization. Hall said he donates 20 percent of the gross profit from the company to iloveschools.com. Donors at iloveschools.com mostly give through schoolsupplydrive.com since the company delivers for free, plus proceeds from that website head back to the schools, Hall said. Hall said his eventual goal is to make iloveschools.com self-sustaining from the profits from schoolsupplydrive.com so it doesn’t have to rely on the generosity of donors to support schools. Hall runs both businesses with two other employees at his apartment on Cass Street in Pacific Beach, although he said he hopes to move into an office in Old Town sometime in the very near future.








