For 24 hours on Dec. 12, the Miami Foundation will offer a partial match to donations made to nonprofits operating in Miami, including the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)
Editor’s note: Thank you to everyone who donated to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting on Give Miami Day. We raised $4,760 from 52 individual donors, in addition to a $1,000 incentive prize and a percentage match from the Miami Foundation. The Give Miami Day fundraiser has ended. However, if you’d like to make a tax-deductible contribution to FCIR, we would be honored to have your support. You may donate now by credit card or check.
Dear Reader,
Thanks for being one of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting’s regular readers. You’ve helped make FCIR a success. In less than three years, the modestly funded nonprofit FCIR has made an outsized impact in the Sunshine State.
FCIR’s government accountability reporting in English and Spanish has been published throughout Florida, on the front pages of the Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times, Florida Times-Union and The Ledger of Lakeland, in ethnic and Spanish-language media including The Florida Courier and La Prensa, and on Florida’s NPR member stations and TV stations in the Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Tallahassee markets.
Our journalism has won dozens of national and regional journalism awards for stories on criminal justice, education, immigration and politics from the National Headliner Awards, National Awards for Education Reporting, Green Eyeshade Awards, and Florida Society of News Editors.
FCIR is a leader in collaborative reporting, having worked with investigative news organizations in California, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico and Guatemala. The Columbia Journalism Review described us a “pioneer bilingual investigative nonprofit.”
For three years, FCIR has received its principal support from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. In the last year, we have aggressively diversified our funding base through partnerships with nonprofit and traditional media by providing data analysis and partnering on grant-funded stories.
We’re telling the stories that aren’t being told in Florida about criminal justice, education, immigration and politics, among other topics, and you can read that journalism here.
Now we need your help as we launch our most ambitious fundraising drive to date so we can tell more of those stories.
For 24 hours starting at midnight on Wednesday, December 12 — or 12/12/12 — the Miami Foundation is encouraging civic-minded people statewide and worldwide to donate to nonprofit and charitable organizations that operate in Miami. FCIR is among these participating nonprofits.
For every donation of $25 or more up to $10,000 that FCIR receives as part of Give Miami Day, the Miami Foundation will match a portion. We don’t know what that amount will be. But the fact is, every penny counts.
That’s why we need your help on Wednesday, December 12. Perhaps you’ve supported FCIR in the past. Or perhaps you like our journalism and never realized that, as public radio stations do, we rely on community support.
We urge you to give a tax-deductible donation to FCIR on Give Miami Day. Our hope is to raise enough money to hire an investigative reporter to expand our coverage. Since our start, FCIR has had two full-time staffers and one part-time blogger, plus a few talented freelance journalists.
For more information, please visit Give Miami Day.
For your contribution to qualify as part of Give Miami Day, you must donate between 12 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. EST on December 12. We hope we can count on your support on Give Miami Day.
All donations through Give Miami Day must be made by credit card on December 12, on the Give Miami Day website or on FCIR.org. If you prefer not to use a credit card, we would be happy to accept donations by check, but these will not be matched as part of the program. Here’s how to donate by check.
If you have any questions, please email or call us at 305-520-9621.
Sincerely,
Trevor Aaronson and Mc Nelly Torres
Associate Directors