We received our 501c3 Status!

A year ago, when The 51st was still a seed of an idea, our small team filed the paperwork for the IRS to grant us tax-exemption as a nonprofit. And just this month, after waiting our turn and undergoing the necessary scrutiny, we were recognized as a 501(c)3 public charity. (!!!)

So what does that mean? Well, there’s no better time to support The 51st than right now! 

Being a nonprofit requires the transparency and focus on community service that is most aligned with our values and vision for what we were building. That looks like:  

• Every year, our financials will be publicly available via our tax filings, on top of everything we share with our members and post on our website. 
• The lionshare of our revenue must go towards our mission: to provide reliable local journalism and community connections for D.C.
• If our organization were to fail, any remaining assets we have would be given to other community causes (it says so in our bylaws!)

So what’s changed? 

For you, all memberships and one-time donations are now tax-deductible! (And this is retroactive to our date of incorporation, so people who donated in 2024 can work with us to document deductions as needed.)

For The 51st… 

• We’re eligible for more grant funding. We’ve been disqualified from several opportunities that align with our work but only provide support to nonprofits. 
• Our operating costs are reduced. Several of the services we currently rely on offer nonprofit discounts, and we stand to save at least $250 each month, starting immediately.
• Large donations go straight to our work. Until now, we’ve relied on a fiscal sponsor to accept larger donations as tax-deductible contributions (all of which are transparently noted here), but a percentage of each donation then pays for the administrative costs for the fiscal sponsor to process the funds. 

Perhaps most importantly for the immediate future: we can stop accounting for tax payments related to our crowdfunding campaign and put all of those funds toward our mission. 

Transparently, if we had to foot that tax bill we would run out of money this year. Instead, we can and will continue doing everything we’re doing now through this time next year(!), as long as our memberships and advertising income hold at the levels they are now. 

But we don’t want to hold here, we know we need to grow and deliver more local reporting. We’re working towards that by hiring our first two staff members: a reporter and editor. (Remember, we’re six part-time folks with a lot of freelance help.) 

If you want more news stories, more newsletters, and deeper reporting – produced in partnership with community members like you – now is the time to join us.  

We're counting on 25 new members to join us this week to keep our growth on track...51 would be even better!