By QUINTON SMITH/Lincoln Chronicle
The basic premise of Lincoln Chronicle — its reporters, freelance writers, news partners, editor and board — is that professionally-reported local news is an important, vital element to a vibrant, engaged and informed community.
That’s why we want to keep growing as other media – locally and across Oregon — shrink.
And while there is lots of pressure on your finances, that’s why we have few qualms about asking for your help each June to fund our operations.
And to encourage you to help us, we have some exciting news to announce.
A generous donor who last year matched up to $25,000 in donations during our June and October fundraising campaigns, is offering this year to double that. The local donor, who wishes to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, will match your donations this month up to $50,000.
This applies to one-time donations and for a year’s total for anyone who signs up to make monthly donations. That means someone who writes a check for $10 or $100 or $1,000 will have that doubled to $20 or $200 or $2,000. Or, someone who signs up through PayPal here to donate $10 a month for a year, will see their year’s total of $120 matched as well.
(A reminder, we are a 501c3 charitable organization and all contributions are tax deductible under IRS rules.)
Before the local donor made the offer last week, the goal for our fourth annual local fundraising campaign this month was $40,000 to $50,000. If we hit that mark, that means a doubling to $80,000 to $100,000 for our yearly operations.
And that could be a game-changer for Lincoln Chronicle. With that infusion of operating funds, we potentially could do several of the following, including:
- Move ahead with plans for a real estate page that highlights property sales across Lincoln County;
- Move ahead with an enhanced civic, events and entertainment calendar to help get the word out on activities throughout Lincoln County;
- Find a way (or someone) to gather and produce a weekly high school sports calendar and results;
- Contract with a photographer/reporter to cover important, interesting or entertaining weekend events;
- Find ways to cover the Depoe Bay and Lincoln City areas better; and
- Contract with a copyeditor/story producer to help ease my editing workload.
Those are some of the ideas bouncing around to continue to expand and improve what we do.
Here’s how to help
- Some readers just like to write a check and be done with it. If you are one of those people, just make the check out to Lincoln Chronicle/YachatsNews and mail it to P.O. Box 284, Yachats, Ore. 97498.
- Others prefer to donate electronically — either one time or via smaller, monthly amounts. Our PayPal account can handle both methods. Simply go here to make a one-time donation or set up an automatic monthly donation.
- This year we also have available a new way to give – the gifting of stock to an account we have set up at Fidelity Investments. If you are interested in learning more about that, contact me via email at YachatsNews@gmail.com or call me at 503-970-3867.—
- Or, if you own a business or head an organization, you can support us and help yourselves by advertising and getting your message in front of 170,000 readers a month. Our ad director, Tiffany Sullivan of Blue Sprocket Brokerage can be of great help. Here is a link to our advertising rate card and Tiffany’s contact information.
Come meet with us
The staff at Lincoln Chronicle has scheduled three community meetings to discuss what we do and answer any questions you have about our work and plans. Two of the meetings are in Newport, where we have added a staff reporter to cover news from that area. These informal gatherings are open to anyone, should take just an hour of your time – and will include some light refreshments to help entice your attendance.
The sessions are:
- 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 17 in the community meeting room of the Newport Recreation Center;
- 4 p.m. Thursday, June 19 in the Yachats Commons’ Civic meeting room; and
- 3 p.m. Thursday, June 26 in the downstairs (McEntee) meeting room of the Newport Public Library.
We hope to see you there. Please bring a friend – and your questions!
- Quinton Smith is the editor of Lincoln Chronicle, formerly YachatsNews.com, and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
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To read our June fundraising kickoff story from last week, go here
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