Harry Jaffe

ALT A graphic showing the logo of The 51st; the heading "IRL THIS WEEK"; and the details "Thursday, 8/22 Minnesota Avenue Farm Stand 322 40th St NE (East River Park Shopping Mall) 1 pm - 4 pm".

ALT We are floored by this flood of support. Thank you for your donations, your shares on social media, and your encouraging messages. We can’t wait to make this happen with all of you. As a little treat at the end of a long day of supporting local news, here’s some more info about how your donations are helping us create an ambitious, community-centered, worker-led organization. We’ll use your money to: Grow our team: Six people can’t possibly represent the breadth of D.C. Our budget for the year includes funds to pay freelance writers and photographers to tell D.C.’s stories. In doing so, we’ll prioritize building a newsroom that reflects the city we want to serve, especially native residents and D.C.’s Black and immigrant communities. Our ideal budget next year creates more staff positions. If we exceed our fundraising goals, we can add more people sooner. Our priority is paying a fair wage and providing a sustainable and balanced work schedule for everyone.

ALT Put together a steering committee: Before we begin publishing, we’ll take time to shape our operations in collaboration with residents. A successful fundraiser will mean we can start recruiting a steering committee of community members to guide priorities and processes for our initial operations. Work with community information organizers: Writers and editors won’t be the entirety of this operation. We’ll also partner with connected community members to facilitate neighborhood events, listening sessions, and feedback groups. These opportunities to hear from you IRL are central to making sure our stories reflect you and the D.C. you love. Pay for our newsroom’s infrastructure: It costs money to register a business, host a website, create a newsletter, set up an HR apparatus, and make a budget and a business plan – not to mention write and edit the stories. We’ve been an entirely volunteer team paying for this stuff out of our pockets up to now. We’re so deeply appreciative.