ELi's Last Appeal

Above: ELi Summer Youth Journalism Program graduate Somer Sodeman, reporting for ELi.

This will be ELi’s last appeal for financial support for our year-end campaign, which is aimed at raising enough funds to get us through 2019. We are hoping that history will repeat itself, and a swell of new and returning donors will pitch in as the clock ticks down in East Lansing.

Why does local news matter?

Because newsrooms are shuttering all over America, researchers have been studying the question of what happens to communities when local news reporting dries up. Here’s what they tell us:

• Voter turnout goes down.
• Government waste goes up.
• Corruption creeps in.
• Social cohesion is diminished.

But in East Lansing, for the last four years, we have not been suffering what experts call “a news desert.” That’s because people like you have made it possible for us to have an independent, nonpartisan, factual, 100% locally-generated and 100% locally-focused news source: East Lansing Info.

How close are we to the goal?

The goal is $80,000. If we can raise that on top of what others have already committed in terms of monthly commitments, including our local corporate sponsors, we will have enough to get us through 2019.

Today, we have LightSpeed sponsoring our main page, the Responsible Hospitality Council and a group of local restaurants sponsoring our Arts & Entertainment reporting, Lou & Harry's sponsoring our sports reporting, and Crunchy's sponsoring our weekly mailer. But the majority of our funding still comes from small individual donations.

As I write, we are at about 91% of the goal, or a little under $73,000. Yes, that’s where I reported us being a few days ago . . . so why we’re still at that mark?

The answer is that a donor mistakenly indicated a $50/month commitment when she meant to donate a single sum of $50. So that put us back $1,100 from where we thought we were. ($50 x 11 additional months would have brought us $550 more, which would have been matched at $550, because annual commitments are being matched right now.)

Hey, mistakes happen – we understand! Last year a mistake like this put us about $3,000 forward and then $3,000 back. But the result is we look stalled, when we have in fact inched forward about $1,000 since our last report, thanks to those who have stepped up recently.

When do the matching funds end?

Before the campaign started, we secured a total of $40,000 in committed matching funds. Matches end on December 31 at midnight, or when we hit $80,000, whichever comes first.

What if we don’t reach the goal?

Several readers have asked this. As the person who (voluntarily) runs ELi’s nonprofit corporation, at that point, I would have to make a decision about what to pull out of the budget.

The logical thing to pull is ELi’s Summer Youth Journalism Program, because of the substantial cost and because it’s technically a non-critical function of ELi. We would hate to see that program go. For two years, that program has resulted in turning local high school students not only into ELi reporters, but into local ambassadors for the free press.

The 2018 ELi Summer Youth Journalism Program participants:

Those youth reporters have gone on to do remarkable reporting for the people of East Lansing. They’ve covered local crime and police activity, high school intramural sports and team sports, civil rights, East Lansing’s homeless shelter for families, charitable events, public artworks, public school traditions, zoning politics, and more. We’ve gotten to mentor them and benefit from their perspectives and work.

If we can’t reach our year-end goal, we will try other means to get the summer program funded – but the simple fact is it is much harder to fundraise at other times of the year.

The 2017 ELi Summer Youth Journalism Program participants:

In 2019, the two-week intensive ELi Summer Youth Journalism Program would cost about $6,000. That would cover paying our high school participants a $250 educational stipend and also for their published reporting, paying our terrific Program Director Cody Harrell for his work before, during, and after the intensive, and buying the group two Friday pizza lunches.

I’ve tried asking some relatively well-off local individuals if they would cover the whole cost, but so far no one has been in a position to do so. So, we’re counting on funding it as we have in the past – with local teamwork of smaller donations.

Are we happy with where we’ve reached?

Absolutely. This has easily been the most successful year for ELi, by every measure, including fundraising. We’ve reached a higher donation level than ever before. In 2018, we were also accepted to the Institute of Nonprofit News and NewsMatch, and a special committee appointed by the City of East Lansing awarded us The Crystal Award, East Lansing’s public service award. ASMSU voted to give us a major donation of $1,500. Those are all big deals for us.

Additionally, this year we've been serving as a national model for a new kind of local news organization. In 2018, our work at ELi was featured in The Christian Science Monitor, the Lenfest Institute’s report on local news operations, the Poynter report on local news (twice), The Guardian (in a guest op-ed by me), and The Membership Puzzle Project’s report on news operations like ours that engage audiences in news production.

But I will be honest: For me, personally, it’s also been the most exhausting year of fundraising, as a number of my fundraising core team members have had to unexpectedly deal with family emergencies. I’ve been doing much more alone on fundraising than usual, although I was also helped this year for the first time by the wonderful Jodi Spicer.

So, I’m hoping folks will step up now and take us to the end goal, secure our 2019 Summer Youth Journalism Program, and let the whole team get back to doing what we’re here for: bringing East Lansing the news.

We so very much appreciate all of your support. If you want to help today, here’s how you can.