PHILADELPHIA — 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 fund-raising sites report. Both sites are on pace to eclipse that in 2016.

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

In her first year as an elementary school teacher in Kingman, Ariz., 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.

But even as Raftery plans to continue pulling $100 to $150 from each paycheck to meet her classroom needs, she said, she knows it won’t be enough.

Teachers have turned to crowdfunding even in states with high per-pupil spending. But while the numbers are enough to cause pause, they aren’t necessarily surprising, said Michael Leachman, director of state fiscal research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Associated Press