ELi Scores Fundraising Match

We need to raise $10,000 this month to keep us going through the end of January. Without that money, we can’t bring you more government and politics coverage, Trojan soccer stories, or deep takes on local treasures like Beggar’s Banquet and The Northern Tail Dog Park. We can't keep paying the small sums we do to keep our worker bee reporters buzzing around town, bringing you back news from our schools, our neighborhoods, our local businesses, and our local crafters and farmers.

So far, we have raised $2,327 during this campaign. Not bad for our first week of this month's campaign! but we need to keep up this momentum to reaach our goal. Have you donated? If you need an incentive to give generously, we have a great one to announce:

For our October fund drive, we are privileged to have an anonymous donor who has offered $500 matches for up to ten $500 “anchor” donations!  If you yourself can’t contribute that much to help us get a  $500 match, consider organizing a group of friends who can total a $500 donation to ELi this month. Our donor has generously agreed to match such organized bulk donations totaling $500 as part of the up-to-ten matches!

Why give, and give generously? Well, we think it's a fact that ELi has become indispensable to many East Lansing residents. They tell us in emails, at the Farmers Market and on social media.

A year ago, we weren’t sure we could pull it off. We’re not only still here, but here with serious momentum in terms of content and readership. We added two new reporters in the past week, both of whom came to us because they liked what we were doing and wanted to be part of it. We also recently received a message from a donor saying that she wanted to be sure her name was on the public list of donors because ELi’s work was so important to her that she wanted to make sure people knew that!

We’re growing like this because we’re listening to you and watching what happens in East Lansing. We live here, we are deeply connected to this town, and we have a passion for sharing what we learn. Because we’re committed to this place and the people who live here with us:

• We provide thorough and impartial reporting on the East Lansing Public Schools, and recently broke the story that the School Board was considering re-opening Red Cedar Elementary.
• We report extensively and deeply on campaign finance and on election politics, and have even caused candidates for Council to choose to disclose early who their donors are.
• We have developed extensive environmental reporting, including stories on The Red Cedar River, many astronomical events, and a whole summer of garden-related issues.
• We provide complete and impartial coverage of East Lansing City Council meetings—even telling you what people are writing in to Council about.
• We took on covering ELHS Men’s soccer when we learned that the team was getting no local press.
• We bring you serious investigative reporting, including in our series The Mercurial Trail and in a recent report on proposed security measures at City Hall.
• We contribute to a sense of place with features like The Good Life, Market Monitor, Ann About Town, and our historically-focused EL Rewind.
• All of our reporters are local citizen journalists, and their ranks include MSU students, ELHS students, retirees, stay-at-home parents, MSU faculty, and caregivers, all of whom bring their own embedded knowledge and personal connections to our readers.

It costs money to run ELi. But we don’t waste a penny! Fully 86% of donations in the past fiscal year went to pay ELi staff, writers, and accountants—to pay real, local humans for their real, local labor. Moreover, almost all of the money donated to ELi remained in the local economy in our last fiscal year, and that will be the case even more so this year. (For a full accounting of Eli’s first year, go here.)

Help us keep thriving and growing!

You can donate with a credit card or check. Go now to: http://www.eastlansinginfo.org/contribute. 

Thank you!