Take Action

Sponsor a school chess team in your district. If your district does not have a team, engage stakeholders in a conversation about starting an afterschool and/or community-based program.

Volunteer to coach an afterschool chess club at your local school. If you don't play chess, then offer your other talents or passions to an afterschool program in dance, art, music or science.

Plan a community fundraiser, like the I.S. 318 walk-a-thon, to help support your school's afterschool programs.

To place chess on par with other forms of competition (e.g., athletics), find ways to celebrate publicly the accomplishments of young chess players in your community.

Create a local advertising campaign to attract kids to chess. Play with ways to communicate that playing chess is "cool" rather than "geeky."

Get involved with efforts to pass school budgets that include funds for so-called "extracurricular," "enrichment" or "afterschool" activities like chess.

Explore DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help student in need. Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests to the site, and you can give any amount to the project that most inspires you.