DonorsChoose.org Launches Back-to-School Campaign in Connecticut [VIDEO]

DonorsChoose.org, the online charity that allows donors to select the specific school projects they’d like to fund, launched an outreach campaign to support Connecticut schools this week.

There are currently 210 classroom projects in need of funding in the state, according to the organization’s website. Of those, 113 are in Fairfield County, including 22 requests from teachers in Stamford and 14 from Norwalk.

In her request, Norwalk teacher Ms. Butler writes, “I need a big band-aid to help these school cuts. Our school can't afford construction paper or the right notebooks for my second graders.” She will use the money donated for construction paper, notebooks and glue sticks.

Ms. Hennen in Stamford needs $109 to purchase “a set of ten stopwatches for my students to use while carrying out labs in my class.”

Katie Bisbee, who grew up in New Canaan and attended , is the Chief Marketing Officer at donorschoose.org.

“Since we know many of our donors care deeply about supporting education the states where they live, we wanted to make sure people knew what the needs were in their own states during “back to school” time,” she said in an e-mail to Patch.

Bisbee said DonorsChoose.org sent 525,000 e-mails to members of their donor community on Wednesday, each containing links to classroom projects awaiting funding in their state.

The organization was started in 2000 by Charles Best, who was a social studies teacher at the time. DonorsChoose.org began funding projects in Connecticut in 2007. Since then, Bisbee said, donors have given more than $1 million to Connecticut schools, and helped more than 67,000 students in the state.