Support ELi Before $650 Left in Matching Funds Run Out!

For the fifth year in a row, East Lansing Info has been accepted to receive up to $19,000 in funds through NewsMatch, a national campaign to support nonprofit news organizations. ELi has also secured $40,000 in additional match funds from generous donors. But we need your help to obtain these funds!

Donate by Dec. 31 and we will be able to DOUBLE the impact of your giving with matching funds! Commit to a monthly donation and we will see it matched at the ANNUAL rate. That means a $5/month commitment puts us $120 closer to the goal.

Find all the ways you can give here, or just hit this orange button to give now:

How is ELi’s 2022 Annual Campaign going?

We have set a goal of $175,000 (more on that below) and, so far, we have raised a total of $134,699 including matches for donations already made, yearly commitments (with the annual commitment matched) and an anticipated $3,000 grant from the Knight Foundation.

That puts us about 77% of the way towards our goal.

We have reached 76% of our campaign goal!

Our goal is to fill up ELi’s “water tower” so that we have enough saved up to “put out news fires” in the next year. Because we have matching funds, whenever you donate, your contribution is matched, filling up our tower twice as fast.

Donate to ELi because you want to support, for example, investigative news, and we will get a match for that donation. Your support then goes TWICE as far! And we still have match money left in the tanker to use!

Between NewsMatch and ELi core donors, we have had about $59,000 in match funds available to us for this Annual Campaign. We have $650 left in the “match tanker.”

Every donation you make will be DOUBLED with a match. Any monthly commitment you make will be matched at the ANNUAL rate. So a monthly commitment of just $25 gets us a whopping $600 closer to our Annual Campaign goal!

But we need you to donate or commit to a monthly contribution before the end of the year. Otherwise we risk losing match funds available to us.

How can you make a tax-deductible contribution?

We provide all the ways you can donate at this page. Because we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, all of your contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent provided by law. We will send you a receipt in January for all contributions to ELi in 2022.

Do subscriptions to East Lansing Insider get matched?

Yes. You can subscribe to East Lansing Insider here at $10/month or $100/year. Doing so will get you the news emailed to you faster than it becomes available at our website. And it will get us a match.

New donors can get us an additional bonus!

If we attract 100 new donors in the course of this campaign, NewsMatch will give us an additional bonus of $1,000. Right now, we have 53 new donors during this period. Any amount of donation counts for this (even just $10), so long as a donor is new to our system. That includes new donors who opt to subscribe via East Lansing Insider.

Did you know you can also donate your IRA distribution to ELi?

Direct your IRA distribution to ELi and you can save on your taxes while supporting local news. Read this article to learn more.

How much money does ELi need to keep the news coming?

For 2023, we estimate that we will need $175,000 to run the entire operation. Consequently, that is the goal we have set for our 2022 Annual Campaign for ELi: $175,000 in donations, grants, bonuses, and annual commitments. You can see our budget below.

We started this campaign with about $50,000 in savings. That gives us a cushion. But if we don’t raise the full amount , then we have to spend energy on fundraising instead of remaining fully focused on news reporting. We would much rather report than spend time fundraising.

What does ELi do?

East Lansing Info is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides timely, nonpartisan, factual local news of East Lansing and has been doing so since September 2014. Our team brings general news of the community – about local businesses, arts and cultures, parks and recreational opportunities – but the heart of our work is functioning as an informational safety net for the people of this city.

We are the only news organization that provides regular coverage of East Lansing’s City Council, Planning Commission, Downtown Development Authority, and the East Lansing School Board and we are the only news team doing investigative work on municipal finance and taxes, policing, big redevelopment, environmental problems and more.

Have a question?

Use our contact page or email us at fundraise@eastlansinginfo.news.

Thank you for your support!