News
NewsMatch campaign helps us do our job, and now is the time to give
This week, we told you about the results of the Nov. 8 midterm elections, gave you a heads-up about a ceremony honoring veterans and featured a popular local restaurant re-opening at a new location.
We covered Peninsula School District’s plans to put two levies before voters next year. We covered both local high school football teams’ playoff games.
How to help
To donate to Gig Harbor Now, click here.
All that was a relatively slow week. Last month, we told you about a local preschool that has not refunded tuition paid by parents, months after the school closed down. We told you about stink bugs, salmon runs and Olalla’s nearly-forgotten missile base. We covered soccer games, city council meetings and local crime.
If you find those stories useful, now is the best time of the year to help us produce them.
NewsMatch campaign critical to our funding
As an independent, nonprofit news organization, Gig Harbor Now is once again participating in NewsMatch. It’s a national fundraising campaign in which national funders match local donations.
So for every $1 the local community donates to us between now and Dec. 31, we get $2. The match runs up to $1,000 per individual donor. Monthly recurring donations also will be matched up to $1,000 total.
“When our readers donate during the annual Newsmatch campaign, demonstrating how much they value Gig Harbor Now and its mission, Newsmatch rewards the community for its support of local journalism by matching these contributions,” said Candace Savage, who was elected president of Gig Harbor Now’s board of directors at our annual meeting this week. “This doubling of dollars is vital to our sustainability.”
The program is managed by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), a network of more than 360 similar news organizations around the country. We are a member of INN, which provided us tremendous suppport when we were getting off the ground a little more than a year ago.
NewsMatch funding comes from a variety of sources, including the Google News Initiative, the Meta Journalism Project (aka Facebook), the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and other family and private foundations.
Our goal
Last year’s Newsmatch campaign brought in $67,000 in total funding, including the match. That’s a huge part of our budget. The bulk of that goes toward providing the content readers rely on via our website, social media channels and our Weekly Newsflash email newsletter.
Our goal this year is to earn at least $50,000 in donations from the local community. We’re at about $6,500 so far, donated by about 20 people.
It’s a great start, given that the campaign has only just begun.
We are so grateful to all those who have supported us — by donating, following us on Facebook, or just reading — in our first year serving Gig Harbor. If you can join them — and get more bang for your buck through NewsMatch — click here.
