Matching grant from Penumbra and hundreds of donations ensure continued local coverage
Thank you!
That’s the best place to start, because I wouldn’t be writing this without the support of so many members of our community.
In June, I raised an alarm with our board of directors. It was clear to me that without a major infusion of funds, we would not have enough resources to make it past Labor Day. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on foundations, grants, and donations to underwrite our work, and our income was lagging far behind our expenses. We started formulating plans for how to close our funding gap and chose a multi-faceted approach. We set Labor Day as our goal to raise $50,000 and started outreach to the community to find the funding we needed.
But very few news funders were awarding grants this summer. I applied to the ones I could find, but we were not chosen. I was also notified of another grant opportunity, but just to get to the application, I would need to fill out a lengthy self-audit form with dozens of detailed questions. I’m still considering applying, but the amount of effort just to get on the playing field is daunting when it requires such a significant outlay of time just to access the application.
Last summer, the Post did very well financially. I completed two different programs that brought $20,000 each, and we received an unexpected $25,000 grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Unfortunately, fast forward 12 months, and our financial situation significantly changed. The grants we received in 2024 were one-time-only, and despite the promise of major funding, philanthropic endeavors like Press Forward denied our application, and the California/Google news agreement has yet to come to fruition. Each promised hundreds of millions of dollars for local newsrooms like ours, but news funders often choose larger organizations, or ones that focus on a popular topic rather than smalltown newspapers such as ours that don’t compete for Pulitzer Prizes or publish highly specialized reporting.
So, for this funding drive, we recognized that the best source of support would be from people who most benefit from our work, the Alameda community itself. That turned out to be true. Thanks to the contributions of almost 300 people and businesses, the Alameda Post will continue reporting and publishing news for Alameda. In the span of two months, we brought in over $110,000 in donations, advertising sales, and tour ticket sales, and effectively closed our daunting funding gap.
Penumbra and Alameda businesses step up
First and foremost, I would like to thank Adam Elsesser, CEO of Penumbra Inc. He made a generous offer to provide a matching donation of $50,000 if we could raise the same amount by our self-imposed deadline. “Penumbra recognizes the value of locally produced news in maintaining a thriving, active, and engaged community,” Elsesser wrote. We appreciate his leadership so much and are deeply grateful for his words and actions that helped us reach our goal.
We contacted dozens of local businesses to let them know about our dire situation and the amazing matching opportunity that Penumbra offered and asked for their help. To be fair, cold-calling businesses asking for donations in the middle of the summer is a big ask, but we got some wonderful responses.
I would like to extend a big thank you to:
- Christopher Siewald of RADIUM, for a generous $10,000 donation.
- David Mik of Power Construction, which contributed $5,000.
- Ben Kim of IAFF Local 689 and Joe Ernst of SRM Ernst Development Partners for their $1,000 gifts.
- Ghost publishing platform, which made a $500 contribution.
- Alameda Family Services, Alameda Youth Basketball, Antiques by the Bay, Kelly Lux Insurance, Replenish Marketplace, Secret Garden, and Temple Israel for purchasing advertising on the site.
- And all the other businesses who made contributions.
Our readers step up
What surprised us the most was the deep generosity shown by individual donors, whose donations made up more than half of our $50,000 goal. Our ranks of recurring donors increased by several dozen, while others made one-time contributions in amounts ranging from $10 to $10,000. Many of the contributions were from current donors, too.
The person who contributed $10,000 is very familiar to us. Alameda resident Bob Barde reached out to us earlier in the year, interested in how he could help the Post become a better news organization, and made a generous contribution then. Barde is an author who is retired from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was the Executive Director of the Experimental Social Science Library and the Deputy Director and Academic Coordinator of the Institute of Business and Economic Research.
Again, this summer, Bob made another generous gift and had this to say to our community: “Local news is a resource far too many people take for granted. Content might be freely distributed, but the time and efforts put into fact-based reporting and coverage for our community are a worthwhile investment. I’m proud to support the Alameda Post, our city’s only local news source, and I hope you will join me to ensure their reporting is available to our community for years to come.”
Other readers who bolstered us with significant contributions include Thushan Amarasiriwardena, Jeff Atwood, Laura Brady, John Brennan, Karen Butter, Linda Bytof, Rachel Campos de Ivanov, Alysa Chadow, Jennifer Cianculli, Luzanne Engh, Carolyn Hamilton, Corey Hayashi, Cary Heil, Craig Hotti, Fran Kahane, Teresa Kennedy, Joe LoParo, Alys Marie Mainhart, Paul Herzmark and Sheila McCormick, Sean and Diana McDonough, Antony Ouyang, Becca Perata, Alexandra Petrich, Amy Price, Anna Crane and Neil Rubenstein, Melinda Samuelson, Marcie Soslau, and Martha Stebbins.
Hundreds more made significant gifts for which we are truly grateful. We value every contribution no matter the amount, but there is something especially wonderful about receiving an envelope in the mail containing a $20 check and a handwritten note of encouragement from a reader making the largest contribution possible from their resources. That kind of support is invaluable.
Our community rallied behind us
Our peers in the Alameda nonprofit community were equally generous with their efforts to let their constituents know about the Post (if they didn’t already) and to alert them to our funding gap. We saw supportive messages from our friends at the USS Hornet, the REAP Center, WABA, the Alameda Chamber, Friends of the Alameda Library, Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter, and other organizations and individuals, which really helped raise awareness of us and our financial situation. There are so many more to thank, and even if you’re not listed here, we are sincerely grateful for your friendship and support.
We are also indebted to Becca Perata, who made herself available to me for multiple meetings to discuss strategy, and provided invaluable assistance in engaging with local businesses. Becca is an incredible resource who opened doors to many business leaders that I would not have been able to access without her introductions. Finally, I would like to recognize the efforts of our Board of Directors and thank them for working so hard to reach out to the community and drive donations.
With all this encouragement, we were able to surpass our fundraising goal before Labor Day, and now we enter the Fall with significant reserves in our bank account. More importantly, we really saw how much the Post means to our community and how willing you are to ensure that we are here to report on and publish the news that matters to Alameda. We’re so proud to have earned your backing.
As I have said before, we made a commitment to support our community, and now it seems clear our community has made a commitment to us. Alameda needs local news, produced locally, because other media has shown repeatedly that unless it’s clickbait, Alameda news rarely gets covered outside our city. We will continue to provide reporting and coverage that is not available anywhere else, and, because of your generosity, we will continue to be Alameda’s news and information source for a long time to come.
Thank you!
Adam Gillitt is the Publisher of the Alameda Post. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Adam-Gillitt.
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