Reader Donates $13,000 to Payday - ⅔ of Lost Grant Replaced

Folks,

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Last April, things were looking pretty scary for Payday Report after our three-year grant from the Illumine Service Foundation expired, which eliminated ⅓ of our budget. To keep Payday afloat and keep our multimedia editor Amos Wolf on at a $1,000-a-month salary, I spent down the entire reserve fund of Payday Report and my life savings. 

By June, I was a month behind on rent and dodging phone calls from utility companies. I was only a few days from having my electricity shut off and constantly getting phone calls from various bill collectors. But I kept fighting, hoping that somehow I could save this publication that we have kept open for ten years with worker crowdfunding. 

Then, in June, a long-time reader stepped up to make a $13,000 donation. It was a shot in the arm to help us keep fighting and gave us the breathing room to develop more sources of revenue. 

This helped us pay down debt, keep our multimedia editor on staff, begin collaborations with unions and community groups that are bringing in new revenue, and allowed us to recruit retired UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend to head up our fundraising committee. (We have a longer update below on our progress and plan for the future)

Since we launched our drive in April to replace the lost grant, we have raised $21,000 - nearly 2/3rds of the grant we lost. Things are still lean and very tight at Payday Report, but we are making progress. Now, we need your help to raise the additional $14,000 so we can continue. 

To celebrate my 11th anniversary of being fired from Politico for union organizing, we are hoping to raise $1,100 online to keep our momentum going. 

Our Progress Since April:

1. Retained Amos Wolf to Head Up Multimedia & Community Engagement Projects 

People are reading the news at nearly half the rate that they were ten years ago when we launched Payday Report. Being a primarily text-based publication means that we are not engaging a huge audience that doesn’t read news. 

For years I have wanted to expand our multimedia reach, but lacked the technical skills, time, and money to do so. With the grant from Illumine Service Foundation I hired Amos Wolf a year ago at $1,000-a-month (plus extra money when we get grants or freelance money) and we began developing a strategy for how multimedia videos complement our text-based audience. 

Additionally, Amos, who has worked in various multimedia and arts community projects throughout Pittsburgh, helped us with new collaborations with unions and community groups. We have developed a five-page newsletter and media training curriculum and began paid collaborations with unions and community groups. 

When we lost the grant in April, I worried that we would have to lay off Amos when our projects were just starting to bring in revenue. I spent down our reserve fund and what little life savings that I had to keep him on board. 

The results have paid off tremendously and we wanna encourage to donate so that we can do more.  

2. Frontline Dignity Collaboration to Provide Immigrant Rights News

For years, corporate media and even many non-profit outlets have frowned upon news organizations working directly with community, activist, and labor groups to cover news. However, the liberal media elite have no issue with taking money from the rich people that run foundations and invest in various political projects. (I guess only when workers and poor folks give money to media is it ever a problem) 

Earlier this year, Payday Report began to collaborate with Frontline Dignity, an immigrants’ rights group based in Pittsburgh working on immigrants’ rights issues throughout the Rust Belt. 

We have begun providing weekly immigration news briefs, distributed to Frontline Dignity’s 5,000 subscribers via their newsletter, helping grow Payday’s newsletter as well. Payday’s collaboration with Frontline Dignity, which has over 17,000 followers on Instagram, extends to videos on how immigrant communities are persevering during these difficult times. 

Check out our YouTube video on the Brazilian community in Pittsburgh. (Be sure to also follow us on Instagram, where the video got far more likes)

3. Paid Collaboration with Unions to Cover News Deserts

Payday also began accepting small amounts of money from unions to cover areas that aren’t being covered. For our first two unions, we went with SEIU Local 99 and SMART Union, two unions with very democratic and proud histories. 

Foundations have traditionally not liked funding labor publications with the kind of money that they give to more top-down liberal elite-run nonprofits. Some in the media object to unions giving money to labor reporters, but Payday has developed a firm set of rules around union funding including:    

1. Payday retains full editorial control and will not seek editorial approval from union officials before publishing anything. 
2. We will not receive more than 5% of our budget from any one union so if they withdraw the money, it won't affect us. 
3. Payday will not run puff pieces on labor leaders who are covering us, nor engage in partisan activity during internal union elections. 
4. Payday will only work with progressive democratic unions and not work with unions that suppress their membership. 

This April, Payday collaborated with SEIU Local 99,who paid for us to come out to Los Angele to cover their contract struggle for 30,000 primarily low-wage school workers against the LA United School District. 

Payday covered how the union educated its members about how the school district had the money but just didn’t want to pay.

4.) UE Legend Chris Townsend to Head Up Fundraising Committee 

Finally, Payday has brought a big guns: Chris Townsend, the retired UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend. As a UE union leader Townsend was fond of carrying around a toliet plunger to show how we needed to unplug the crap hurting the labor movement.

My dad Gene Elk, the retired UE Director of Organization recruited Townsend in the mid 1980s. I've literally known Townsend since I was born, 40 years ago.

Over the years, Chris Townsend has helped raise millions of dollars for grassroots organizations. Now, Townsend is leading Payday’s efforts to create a volunteer fundraising committee. 

What’s Next for Payday Report? 

1. Newsletter and Media Trainings for Unions and Community Groups 

Through our work with unions and community groups, Payday Report has developed a five-page curriculum for workshops on teaching people how to build their own community media and interact with the current media structures. 

(Read our full five-page newsletter and media training curriculum here) 

​For a small sliding-scale fee, we’ll offer these media training sessions for unions and community groups who want to learn how to navigate the rapidly changing media landscape, including legacy media, independent media, nonprofit newsrooms, and social media creators.

For decades, unions have been fleeced by PR consultants who extract high fees while promising special access to reporters. Often this is deceptive, as their relationships consist of contact lists with reporters who see them as a nuisance, and their pitches are flat and full of generic talking points, rather than colorful, authentic material that reporters can get directly from workers.

​As part of these media training sessions, I will teach union members how to build genuine relationships with journalists. I will teach how to understand a reporter’s interests, their audience, the demands of their editors, and how to build a genuine relationship based on mutual understanding. 

If your union or group is interested in hosting a training, you can fill out our interest form here. 

2. Volunteer Fundraising Committee 

With Chris Townsend heading up our volunteer fundraising committee, Chris will be able to provide leadership on grassroots fundraising beyond the crowdfunding that we are already doing. Already, we have seen an uptick in people donating with our new strategies and infrastructure put into place. 

If you are interested in getting involved in the volunteer fundraising committee, sign up here & fill out our survey. 

3. Serve as Brazilian Presidential Election Observer

In October, voters in Brasil will decide if Lula gets re-elected. Already, the Trump Administration is trying to steal the election and Lula is fighting back. 

But most of the US media, even the left media, is ignoring this critical election. Payday, though, has covered Brasil extensively over our decade in existence and I intended to go down to act as an election observer covering the election. 

More than 20 years ago, I attended college at PUC-Rio de Janeiro and since then I travel once or twice a year to Rio where I stay with my old host family (for free) to save money when reporting from Brasil.

I am fluent in Portuguese and have extensive experience covering both the Brazilian labor movement and Lula on the ground in Brasil. My reporting was recognized when I got invited by Lula’s staff to go inside the Oval Office to cover Lula’s state visit with Biden in 2023.

For years, I have been covering how the Rio Police Chief and a Brazilian Congressman were involved in and finally convicted for the assassination of socialist Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco in 2018.

Marielle Franco and I studied sociology together at PUC-Rio in the middle of the 2000s, and I’ve tracked the story closely while most North American media outlets ignored it. For the past four years I have been filming Marielle Vive, a documentary on the fight for justice for Marielle Franco. 

Now, we need to prepare to cover Brazilian presidential elections once again so we observe what’s going on and report back. (For more information on election observers in Brasil, check out “International Observatory on Brasil’s 2026 Election”)

4.  Bring Payday Newsletter Back to 3x a Week 

As Payday has struggled to fundraise, I have not been able to spend as much time on producing Payday’s beloved newsletter. Now, with increased funding, we intend to bring back the newsletter to three-times a week. 

Getting the newsletter back to this frequency will help Payday to further its media reach and cover news deserts. 

Payday has shown a proven ability to impact the conversation on the labor movement. Our work covering the strike wave has been praised by The Washington Post, which cited our work tracking strikes in a front-page cover story. The New York Times described us as a publication with “new energy.” PBS American Portrait profiled our work tracking the strike wave, and Esquire described our work as “invaluable.”

Our work with CNN’s W. Kamau Bell on the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre and racism in Pittsburgh was also nominated for an Emmy. 

Payday has been reporting for ten years and published over 1,500 articles. Now, help us stay in business for another ten years by raising the additional $14,000 we need to close the grant funding gap. 

In honor of my 11th anniversary of being fired from Politico for union organizing, I am hoping to raise $1,100 to create some momentum for this fall’s fundraising as we seek to raise the last $14,000 in the next two months.

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