No, Gulf Coast Media does not have 501(c)(3) tax status, but you can make a tax-deductible gift to support the newsroom through our fiscal sponsor.

Yes. Our fiscal sponsor, Report for America/The GroundTruth Project (EIN: 46-0908502), is a 501(c)(3) corporation. Donations can be made through the donate button, located at the top and bottom of this page, as well as in the top-right menu dropdown if you’re viewing on a mobile device, or the far-left side of our website’s navigation if you’re viewing on a desktop. Checks can be made out to Report for America, C/O Gulf Coast Media and mailed to Gulf Coast Media, 1350 N. McKenzie St., Foley, AL 36535.

Yes, checks can be made out to Report for America, C/O Gulf Coast Media and mailed to Gulf Coast Media, 1350 N. McKenzie St., Foley, AL 36535. They can also be dropped off in person Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

Yes. Our policy for all donations to the Fund reads, in part, as follows: All donations to the fund are restricted to use by the newsroom at the direction of the publisher. Report for America does not take an administrative fee or a percentage of donations. There are transaction fees that Gulf Coast Media pays to our donation platform, Mazloweb.com, and those fees for credit card donations are 2.2% plus 30 cents per transaction. Donations made online through the Mazlo platform, https://donate.mazloweb.com/donate/gulf-coast-media, have the option to cover credit card fees.

The traditional and historical means by which newspapers funded their operations was through print advertising. During the last two decades, that business model has been severely disrupted, mostly by tech giants Google and Facebook, who now garner the lion’s share of all digital advertising. While our loyal advertisers and subscribers are critical to our future, newsrooms are increasingly looking to donors and philanthropists to fund the continuation and expansion of local news, even specific topics they care about.

Gulf Coast Media, which is the only newspaper to cover all of Baldwin County, maintains a staff of 14, including five staff reporters who are either writers, photographers and/or editors. Gulf Coast Media is a host newsroom for Report for America, which enabled us us to add a reporter as a corps member, but local support is needed to ensure the position is sustainable.

Gulf Coast Media’s news judgments are made independently — not based on or influenced by donors or any revenue source. We do not give supporters the authority to assign, review or edit content. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content. We will not accept donations from government entities, political parties or from any source who, deemed by our publisher and editor, presents a conflict of interest with our work or compromises our independence, which we have retained since the first of our four community newspapers launched in 1890.