Google, Yahoo!, Six Apart and Federated Media will give awards to the bloggers who have the greatest impact during the DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge October 1-31st.

DonorsChoose is a nonprofit website where public school teachers post underfunded classroom projects like the Walk in the Wild project submitted by a second grade teacher at Spring Creek Elementary School in Kentwood, Louisiana. They need $1,265 to create an outdoor classroom which will include four discovery-learning stations. The school is located in the rural community of northern Tangipahoa Parish where 75% of the students receive free/reduced fee lunches.

Google will award the bloggers who raise the most money, in each of the eight DonorsChoose challenge categories, with a link from the Official Google Blog and $500 gift certificates to spend on DonorsChoose.

Yahoo! will give the blogger who motivates the most readers to participate in the Blogger Challenge lunch with Chief Yahoo and CEO, Jerry Yang.

Six Apart is sponsoring an award for the bloggers who help the greatest number of students during the Blogger Challenge.

Federated Media Publishing is sponsosring an award for the bloggers who come up with the most creative incentive for their readers to give.

According to the Leader Board, as of this writing, it looks like Tomato Nation is in the lead:

Goal: $100,000
Donated: $86,095
Needs: $13,905
Donors: 1017
Students Impacted: 12803

You can create your own Bloggers Challenge (even after the contest is over) in four steps:

1. Create a Challenge
2. Pick an amount you want to raise through your Challenge
3. Search for proposals to add to your Challenge
4. Tell your friends, family and colleagues about your Challenge.

You can download a more detailed PDF of instructions at the bottom of this post.

For further reading:

Make Sarah Buntin Wear a Tomato Outfit, Parade Around Rockfeller Center and Support DonorsChoose! by Beth Kanter of Beth's Blog
Charity Bloggers by Lucy Bernholz of Phiilanthropy 2173
Will You Help Engadget Energize Education (And Own the Blogger Challenge Leader Board?) by Evan Blass of Engadget

Photo Credit: Children's Garden by Dylan Duvergé