Darien Community Fund Announces Impact Vine ProjectPitch Winners

From the Community Fund of Darien: The Impact Vine, an initiative of The Community Fund of Darien has announced the winners of ProjectPitch, The Impact Vine’s recent shark tank-type online contest for Lower Fairfield County nonprofits.

The contest was held to celebrate The Impact Vine’s launch as a new online giving site which allows donors to support projects they care about, and provides a platform for local nonprofits to use as a tool to raise funds for socially impactful projects in the community.

100% of donations go directly to the nonprofit when the project has funded.

ProjectPitch Winners Are:

Grand Prize: LiveGirl for their project, Fund a Docudrama: “A Million Likes (is never enough)” to Help Middle School Girls Navigate Social Media Pressure

First Prize: River House Adult Day Center for their project “Dancing For Dollars: Our Seniors Will Dance for One Minute For Every $5 Raised!"

Second Prize: Kids Helping Kids for their project, “Fun with Science: Help Us Create SLIME Using Science!”

New Canaan: From ProjectPitch Grand Prize winner, LiveGirl’s Founder and Executive Director, Sheri West, “LiveGirl has shown me how vulnerable teen girls are today as they face adolescent pressures amplified by social media. The ProjectPitch award will enable us to move forward our collaboration with KUU Productions to produce ‘A Million Likes’ docudrama, with the core message that ‘a million likes will never be enough if you don’t like yourself’. We are certain that this docudrama will empower the girls of Fairfield County.”

Greenwich: And, from ProjectPitch First Prize winner, Lyndsay DeMatteo, MSG, Director of Therapeutic Recreation, River House, “We are so grateful to receive second prize in the pitch contest. This is a great start to getting a new speaker system! The new sound system will add so much to our River House programming! Music is a therapeutic tool that has the power to speak to people of all ages and abilities, and being able to use that tool both inside and outside of our facility will be an incredible addition to the services we provide.”

Stamford: ProjectPitch Third Prize winner, Kids Helping Kids founder, Jennifer Kelly, said, “We are so excited about ProjectPitch because we have so many creative student-led projects! This social media fundraising avenue will be a HUGE help in allowing us to do so much more! Thanks for creating ProjectPitch!”

The Impact Vine Project Director, Susan Serven, said, “We’ve received so many terrific entries to ProjectPitch, it was difficult to select just a few winners. Many of the nonprofits who participated have already posted their projects on The Impact Vine, many others plan to do so, and, since these projects will help solve so many social problems in the community we feel every one of them is already a winner!”

“We’d like to send out a huge thank you to The Impact Vine’s ProjectPitch sponsors, Gilman Hill Asset Management for supporting this online event, and we’d like to encourage every lower Fairfield County nonprofit to check out our web site and post a project on The Impact Vine!” she continued.

Photo caption: From left to right: River House client Lucille, Director of Therapeutic Recreation Lyndsay DeMatteo MSG, River House Clients Sal and Giovanna, and Therapeutic Recreation Manager Donna Palmer

Photo courtesy of the Community Fund of Darien