Dear Armchair Lehigh Valley readers,
Today’s email is a change from our usual digest of Lehigh Valley election news. When we started Armchair Lehigh Valley, we sought to become a reputable source for local voters by providing factual, nonpartisan reporting so you could make informed decisions at the polls.
Since we launched this newsletter in March 2022, we have done just that: writing nearly 200 stories about many local contests from congressional and state legislative seats to county, municipal and school board positions. More than 800 subscribers now receive our free coverage of election results, campaign finances, mail-in voting, voter registration trends, redistricting and court challenges.
Now Armchair Lehigh Valley has reached a new milestone. This year, we became a nonprofit corporation in Pennsylvania, established a board of directors and in September registered as a 501(c)3 nonprofit with the IRS. We also became a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), which provides support and resources to more than 400 nonprofit news organizations of various sizes.
We are proud of reaching this new phase. It allows us to rely on the generosity of readers like you to help power and even expand our coverage. If you believe in the mission and growth of Armchair Lehigh Valley, we would be honored to have your support by making a $5 donation to invest in the vitality and longevity of our organization. Whether you choose to donate or not, we are committed to providing free election news and remaining unbiased in our approach.
Because of our INN network membership, Armchair Lehigh Valley is eligible to receive donor match funds through their annual NewsMatch campaign. This means all donations made between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, will be matched three-to-one, so your $5 donation triples and becomes $15 for Armchair Lehigh Valley.
Your gift will help cover the essential costs of running a volunteer newsroom, which includes membership and legal fees, liability insurance and miscellaneous charges associated with accessing voter registration data, campaign finance reports and court records. It will also allow us to hire freelance writers to supplement our own reporting.
We have looked ahead at our budget for 2024 — a presidential election year that anticipates high voter turnout and requires rigorous reporting — and have set a goal to raise $2,000 during the NewsMatch Campaign.
Your gift could help us cement Armchair Lehigh Valley’s future as a reliable, viable news outlet in a region that has seen too many layoffs at newspapers and scaling back of coverage in recent decades. If you believe, as we do, in the critical need for local news, we hope you will choose to support our work today.
Thank you for being a loyal reader,
Katherine Reinhard & Robert Orenstein,
Co-directors and co-founders of Armchair Lehigh Valley
