Dave Eggers is a famous author and publisher, but he’s also a teacher, an advocate and a philanthropist. His 8-year-old writing project, named after its address –  826 Valencia — offers free writing and editing workshops, a great books/”Best American Nonrequired Reading” class, field trips and drop-in tutoring. (And a pirate store, in case you ever need one.)

Eggers’ latest idea is to make donating college scholarships more appealing by making it more personal, a model used by DonorsChoose.

His new site, Scholar Match, launched a couple of weeks ago and features a number of profiles from students at Oakland Unity High School in East Oakland. They’re starting slow, adding new scholarship recipient hopefuls as donors register, but any college-bound (or college) student may apply to have their profiles posted on the site. The organization is giving preference to San Francisco and East Bay students.

I talked to Eggers about the project and wrote a story about it, which should appear in Sunday’s paper.