Crowdfunded Classrooms: Teachers Increasingly Solicit Online

Paper? Pencils? Laptops? Robots? Teachers are increasingly relying on crowdfunding efforts to stock their classrooms with both the mundane and sometimes big-ticket items.

Contributions to education campaigns have climbed on GoFundMe and DonorsChoose, collectively, from just more than $31.2 million in 2010 to nearly $140 million in 2015, the do-it-yourself fundraising sites report. Both sites are on pace to eclipse that in 2016.

GoFundMe has collected $58 million in just the last 12 months, and DonorsChoose saw more than 50,000 campaigns live on the site for the first time this back-to-school season.

In her first year as an elementary school teacher in Kingman, Arizona, Shannon Raftery raised $340 through crowdfunding to supplement the money she took out of each paycheck to pay for classroom supplies. Now in Philadelphia, she’s looking to raise $500 for her new kindergarten classroom at Roosevelt Elementary School.

She has a supportive principal, she said, but there is just not enough money in the notoriously cash-strapped Philadelphia district to equip her classroom the way she’d like.

In her case, reality is a $200 budget allocated to cover 25 students in a school where at least 40 percent of students live in poverty. She has spent that even before the start of classes after Labor Day.

“I’d rather spend my own money than have my kids go without something,” she said. “Every dollar helps.”