Our Story

The My Student In Need story…

The vision of My Student in Need came about while My Neighbor in Need Founder, Dave Snuggs, his Wife, Karen Schaefer, and two friends, one of whom was a principal at a school in Spokane, Washington were having dinner prior to the start of a concert in July, 2013. They were discussing the needs of children in the public school system throughout the country when the question was asked why we could not create a My Neighbor in Need project just for the needs of students.

The problem we faced was that you could not use the same type of system that My Neighbor in Need uses because every need request goes through a verification process and to replicate that system, we would have to speak with the students directly and that would be not possible. What we needed was for someone else to do the vetting process, someone who has a direct link to the students and first-hand knowledge of their needs but who? Then came the “Flash of Genius” as it was suggested that we involve the teachers because who knows their students better than their teachers.

In less than three-weeks after the idea was first discussed, Tom Penwell of Tom’s Web Designs, the same individual who developed myneighborinneed.org created mystudentinneed.org and on September 27, 2013 the project was launched in the Great Falls Public Schools System, serving 21 schools.

The My Student in Need project caught on as other schools in Montana heard about the simple and easy way to help students who were in need. At the end of the of 2015/2016 school year, My Student in Need, and donors from across the State of Montana and beyond had fulfilled over 1,500 need requests from 70 schools in Montana. In the fall of 2016, the project grew to 130 schools being served across the State of Montana. Now in 2023, My Student in Need has completed 4,100 need requests and is currently in over 150 schools.

Our motto is simple: “By brokering the community’s kindness, we bring hope to the hopeless.”