Every single day, our staff and freelancers are fighting to get out the information our community needs to build a more just and equitable Atlanta.
We’re submitting open records requests. We’re at nearly every city council meeting. We’re suing and winning lawsuits that limit our government’s ability to hide behind nonprofits like the Atlanta Police Foundation.
We do this because we love Atlanta. We have a vision for Atlanta. We dream of building an independent newsroom that rivals the legacy media in this city, taking on the stories they ignore, fighting the battles they won’t—fighting the rise of outright fascism under the Trump administration.
I’ll be blunt: We won’t be able to build on that dream or fight those battles if we don’t have your support. We will run out of funding by the end of the year if we don’t increase our fundraising from readers like you.
We don’t have corporate backers. We’re not part of a national chain. At the beginning of last year, we had a respectable number of monthly donors supporting our work. But when our fiscal sponsor announced it was closing up shop, we had to start from square one.
For the past three years, our work has been almost entirely funded by foundations and individual large donors. But now, foundations are hesitating and acting in fear amid the uncertainty of the Trump administration. They’ve let nonprofit newsrooms like ours down. Just this year, we’ve seen three promising grants fall through.
I’ll be honest. We are in a hard spot. We’re pulling funds intended for next year to keep our operation running.
We—like many other news organizations—are relying on our community, now more than ever, to fill the gap left by the foundations unwilling to fight back against the Trump administration. .
