It’s Giving Tuesday!

BY JENNIFER CABRERA
Today is Giving Tuesday, and we hope you will consider supporting Alachua Chronicle’s independent local reporting as you make your gifts today.
Every day, my email contains requests like those below:
- Please check into why so many employees are leaving [insert government agency]
- Check out the organizational changes at [insert government agency]
- Please report on a specific story
- Have you read this contract on [government agency’s] consent agenda?
- Have you seen this report from [government agency’s advisory board]?
- Do you know about this criminal investigation?
- Can you report on this information about a candidate for local office?
Alachua Chronicle has ONE full-time employee. Our top priority is covering the ever-increasing number of Gainesville City Commission, County Commission, GRU Authority, and School Board meetings. We also cover crime stories and publish press releases for organizations and businesses in our community. On the rare occasions when all of that is complete, we dig into investigative work.
The whole company runs on a total budget that is comparable to the salary of one reporter at a bigger publication. We don’t have wrapped cars, and we can’t afford a marketing agency. We don’t have salespeople to sell ads. We don’t have an office. The money you give us goes directly to writing articles so you know what’s going on in our community.
In the past year, we’ve added a freelancer to cover the governments in High Springs and Newberry, and we still want to cover the other cities in Alachua County – but we need your help.
If you want more reporting, we need to hire people, and that means we need a predictable income stream. While we appreciate one-time donations, it’s the monthly donations that make for a predictable income stream, so we encourage everyone to set up a recurring monthly payment through the donation link found on every page of the site – any amount helps. If you prefer to send checks (PO Box 344, Alachua, FL, 32616), you may be able to set up a recurring payment from your bank’s website. Think of it as your newspaper subscription (in November 2019, a monthly subscription to the Gainesville Sun cost over $50/month).
If you are a person with disposable income who believes that independent local reporting is important, please consider a significant donation. An “angel” donor would enable us to hire a full-time reporter or increase the content from our freelancers.
Advertising is also very helpful – rates and details are here – because, again, it is a predictable income stream.
However you choose to support us, we simply encourage you to consider setting up a monthly payment right now, if you haven’t already done so (if you have, thank you!).
Donations to Alachua Chronicle are not tax-deductible.