YOUR ELi: The Truth

Right now, ELi is not sustainable. Since a week ago, we have raised an additional $240 in donations, which is not enough to cover our operating expenses for this week. (We currently need about $550/week.) Given that we are in a fundraising month and are trying to raise enough to survive through the end of September, we actually need to be raising much more than our operating expenses right now.

Yes, we should be doing a much harder fundraising push. We should be nagging individual fans of ELi, trying to write grants, maybe going for local business sponsorships that would not cause us real or perceived conflicts-of-interest. We should be explaining ad naseum how we are the only non-commercial, non-editorial, fact-focused news service that exists for you, the people of East Lansing.

But you know what? Just running ELi is actually a tremendous amount of work for Ann Nichols, our managing editor, and me, and it is really hard to find the time to fundraise while we are also trying to bring you the news. To be honest, Ann and I also fall into this crazy fantasy where people will get that the service that is ELi is so valuable to this city that we won’t have to beg and nag and waste time we could spend on getting you the news instead pleading for $10/month donations.

Here’s the real deal:

My spouse (Aron Sousa) and I love this town and ELi so much that we personally support a large chunk of it. I put a great deal of the money I earn as a national writer towards ELi—I sign the checks over. We make no money off of ELi; we donate our reporting and editing work, in addition to donating large amounts of money that we tax-deduct.

But we can’t keep ELi going on at this rate, nor can we make it better—good enough to the point where grants and other large forms of sponsorship are possible. If that’s going to happen, far more people in this town are going to have to signal that they want this service enough to help it financially.

I have never looked at ELi as a business, so please do me a favor, and don’t talk about “sustainable business models.” ELi is a public service, plain and simple. It is not meant to make money or to last forever. It is simply meant to do local good—to educate people about what’s going on in this town, to tell everybody about opportunities, communal losses and gains, to make people feel invested in this community.

I view us as similar to services like suicide prevention hotlines and foodbanks—we do what we can as long as we can, and even if we are not here forever, the work we will have done will have mattered during the time we did it.

I’d like to keep it going. Running ELi and reporting for ELi—volunteering about 20-30 hours a week away from my own career—has meant having to see up close so many things that I feel like people need the facts about: our almost $200 million in City debt and what this is going to mean to our future as taxpayers and residents; the $100 million TIF plan the City is about to take on with whomever is PDIG; local campaign finance; critical school board decisions about staffing, buildings, and sex ed; and so much more. I also am seeing so much that, when brought to our neighbors, can improve their quality of life—local volunteer projects, delightful eats and performances, natural wonders.

I was raised to lead a life of public service, and I will always live one. Spending this much time on volunteer work isn’t new for me—it’s just where I’ve been putting it that is new. (Usually I work nationally and internationally on medical reform issues, including LGBT and intersex care.)

But sometimes I think that if the financial will or the financial ability isn’t here to enable what we are doing, then maybe our energies are best spent elsewhere. Sometimes I think my energy would be better invested in the work I normally do. That would make me sad, but I also understand that not everyone has the privilege and the upbringing I have had.

If you do want ELi to keep going, now would be a good time to help financially, perhaps by encouraging friends to donate. Click here.