An Update Regarding Our Fiscal Sponsor
Dear Reader,
I'll get straight to the point: Our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Open Collective Foundation, has announced that it will dissolve by the end of the year.
This has come to a shock to us. I was personally made aware of this information by Friend of The Xylom Matt Scott of the Atlanta Community Press Collective, which is also fiscally sponsored by OCF; the offical announcement didn't reach our mailboxes until a day later.
Here's what you need to know:
- We will not be able to accept new donations after March 15th, until we get a new fiscal sponsor. (If you would like to support us, what are you waiting for?!)
- Any existing monthly donations will be automatically terminated after March 15th.
- Over this week, our Advisory Board and staff will hold an emergency meeting, while I will also be talking with board members frm potential new fiscal sponsors. Our priority is to make sure Shreya continues to be employed while we could receive significant chunks of funds from INN/ NewsMatch and LION Publishers.
- Our funding on hand could sustain operations until well into the summer.
This is not the first time we've been forced to switch fiscal sponsors, but I ask for your understanding throughout this stressful and uncertain time. We will update you as the situation develops.
Yours sincerely,
Alex Ip, Editor-in-Chief, The Xylom
P.S. Please take a few minutes to take our audience survey. Every response is important to us here at The Xylom and as a thank you we will randomly select five responses to get a $50 gift card!
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TODAY IN THINGS YOU MUST READ
FAMILY NEWS!
- We've joined the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets (ANNO), effective immediately. Read Nieman Lab's coverage of what ANNO stands for.
- Check out the statuettes from the 3rd Annual Anthem Awards!
@alexip718.bsky.social on Bluesky
Our newsroom @thexylom.com's first major award came in the mail! (Cat not included)
- From The Open Notebook, Take a look at A Day in the Life of Betsy Ladyzhets, and Alex Ip's thoughts on Writing Science Explainers for Local Audiences !
- Congrats to new members of the Institute for Nonprofit News, including the ATL's own Atlanta Community Press Collective!
- For Nature, Saugat Bolakhe interviewed Kumar Paudel, a young Nepali researcher conservationist who has taken his cause to Nepal’s highest court.
A SOUTHERN FLAIR
- Medicaid Expansion, long derided and blocked by conservative legislative leaders, passed the Mississippi House last week 98-20 (a veto-proof supermajority) in less than 15 minutes, no questions asked. Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison looks at what this means for the Magnolia State's decades-long struggle to shed its label as a cellar-dwellar in health outcomes.
- The EPA is not happy with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division's deference to Georgia Power's plan to store heavy metal-laden and cancer-causing coal ash in groundwater near Plant Hammond in Northeast Georgia. More from GPB:
- A reporting partnership between Atlanta News First and Grist documents how warehouse workers have been harmed by ethylene oxide, a toxic and cancer-causing chemical commonly used to sterilize medical supplies. Knowledge of this contamination was possible due to Georgia having the only state agency proactively regulating warehouses that store ethylene oxide products.
WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
- WIRED obtained a leaked document that locates where over 25,000 sensors of the ShotSpotter gunshot-detection system are located. The results are about as much as you would expect: they are disproportionately found in Black, Brown, and poor neighborhoods.
- The Transmitter's Emily Sohn profiles Maiken Nedergaard, a controversial Danish-American neruoscientist who is about to disrupt what we thought we knew about brain and spinal fluid movement for a second time in a decade, with implications for how we treat neurological diseases.
- Rest of World provided South Asian gig workers across smog-filled Lahore, New Delhi, and Dhaka with pollution monitors. All of them were routinely exposed to hazardous levels of pollutants.
THE XYLOM'S RECENT STORIES
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Another Day at the Courts with Kenya's Ogiek Tribe
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