December 1, 2003

Health Center, Storrs Contributons
Neck And Neck In Charitable Campaign

The outcome of a healthy rivalry between leaders of the Connecticut State Employees Charitable Campaign in Storrs and Farmington looks set to be determined by a slender margin of just a few dollars.

As the sun set on Nov. 18, and the 2003 charitable campaign was winding down, the 513 employees in Storrs who have contributed to the campaign, led by Maria Sedotti, held the tiniest of fund-raising leads over contributors at the Health Center, headed by Joyce Borkowski: $101,488 to $101,449.

"We're still accepting pledges," Sedotti said last week. "We've reached our goal of $100,000, but we're hoping to boost the number of participants. And we have to stay ahead of the Health Center!"

"This is by far the most successful campaign we've had in recent years," said Borkowski, who has run the Health Center-based campaign for a number of years. "We've raised nearly 30 percent more donations, and we've more than doubled the number of people participating. But now I think we have a different goal - beat UConn-Storrs!"

Taken together, the contributions marked the second consecutive year that UConn employees have contributed more than $200,000 to the overall state employee campaign, by far the largest amount from a single state agency and about 15 percent of the state total.