I'm happy to report that this year Streetsblog Chicago was able to wrap up our annual fund drive one month sooner than we did in 2023. OK, that was partly because I spent about a month in healthcare centers that spring, after I was whacked in the head by some plastic pipe sticking out of a pickup truck, while I was on a bicycle trip in southern Illinois.
Heartwarmingly, scores of Chicago sustainable transportation advocates responded with messages of encouragement, plus donations that helped SBC get past the funding finish line as I recovered last year. But needless to say, this spring has been going a lot more smoothly for me!
Once again, I'm very grateful to Streetsblog Chicago's major donors, advertisers, and loyal readers like yourselves that helped us achieve our goal. For this fund drive, our target was to raise $60,000. That's $10K more than in previous years, so that we could afford cost-of-living raises for our dedicated staff and talented freelance writers, plus other expenses of running the website.
It was challenging to reach that number. So I'm especially thankful for an extremely generous new donation of $20,000 from the Abreu Shepard Family Fund. That allowed us to actually surpass our goal, raising a total of over $66K. That was obviously a huge help.
I also truly appreciate the munificent Streetsblog Chicago superfan who has now donated $10,000 to support our walk/bike/transit reporting and advocacy for the twelfth year that this site has existed.
Another big help this time was a $1,500 donation from Grainger to match a $500 contribution from employee Jack Carter. Kudos also to the Green Justice Fund for a $1,000 gift.
Thanks a lot also to our returning advertising sponsors: FK Law, Keating Law Offices, Boulevard Bikes, the Bike Lane, SHOFUR, the Active Transportation Alliance, Ride Illinois, and Roscoe Village Bikes.
Streetsblog Chicago is also in the running for another major grant that would complete our 2024-25 budget, and we look forward to sharing news about that in the near future.
Currently we've got a great crew at Streetsblog Chicago. I'm very glad that cofounder Steven Vance is still in the mix as editor-at large, providing important feedback on editorial decisions and tech support, as well as insightful articles. And Black Communities Reporter Cameron Bolton has been doing great work, helping to expand the site's coverage of transportation equity issues on the South and West sides.
I also appreciate SBC's roster of gifted contributing writers, including Richard Day, Amber Drea, Sharon Hoyer, AJ LaTrace, Mia Park, James Porter, and Igor Studenkov.
And there's a lot of work to do in the near future. Key topics we're covering include the campaign to reduce our city's default speed limit from 30 mph to 25 to save lives and money. What's going to happen with the proposed bill to combine the four Chicagoland transit agencies into one? And after an encouraging 2023 protected bike lane construction season, will we see more progress towards creating a citywide, connected, protected bicycle network this summer?
Because of Streetsblog Chicago's generous supporters, it looks very promising that we'll be able to keep the site running steadily for the next year. Thanks so much for your help!
– John Greenfield, editor-in-chief
