Designation as a 501(c)(3) Acknowledges Commitment to Serve the Public with News and Information
Beginning today, August 15, Ark Valley Voice (AVV) has become a nonprofit news organization.
This summer AVV was accepted as a full newsroom member of the prestigious Institute for Nonprofit News, which is now also our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor. We have been absorbed by our sister organization, the Truth Has a Voice Foundation (THAVF), as the publishing branch of this blended public service entity.
“After more than four years serving our readers not just across the Central Colorado region, but across the country and around the world, this is an exciting time for the AVV Crew,” said Managing Editor and Publisher Jan Wondra. “Now our corporate structure matches what has been our mission from day one, ensuring in our reporting sphere, that ‘truth has a voice.'”
That goal has more than one facet — we give a voice to the facts and information that don’t always have one in the Upper Arkansas Valley — providing objective, factual, local journalism that supports an informed community. We encourage civil discourse and government accountability while reflecting the values of our community and shining a spotlight on the challenges.
AVV began as an LLC digital news media in 2018, and this shift to nonprofit status solidifies our commitment to serving the public while reinforcing our informative role in democratic engagement, upholding the Rule of Law necessary to our democracy.
With THAVF and under INN’s umbrella, we will not just publish news, but continue to hold candidate forums, support media literacy outreach, and civic education. It also means that donations to Ark Valley Voice, which will now flow through INN, become 100 percent tax deductible. This adds even more value to those who have supported us all along, and we ask for community support as we take this important step.
Part of our commitment to serving the public has been to remove the cost barriers to provide impartial, unbiased news and information to readers. While there still is no subscription cost for AVV, this new nonprofit designation puts AVV in a better position to apply for journalism grants, and it means that we can accept individual memberships and both corporate and small business sponsorships as others do in public broadcasting.
We have no corporate profit goals. As an extremely cost-efficient, low overhead news organization (meaning we’re poor, but committed), we have always run on a shoestring. The donations of our readers and supporters mean the world to us because 100 percent of all donations go to pay the wages of our journalists.
Editorial control will remain with Managing Editor and Publisher Jan Wondra, who will now report operationally to a nonprofit board of directors drawn from the community. Ark Valley Voice will also be reactivating its AVV Advisory Board, which went dormant during the COVID-19 pandemic, when our entire AVV crew continued to work without pay for months, to make sure you got the news important to your lives.
Our commitment has always been not to tell you what to think, but to give you things to think about.
We hope that our readers will support this move by becoming members, and donor sponsors of Ark Valley Voice.
Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Ark Valley Voice.
Featured image: Some of the AVV “Crew” that brings you news six-plus days a week.
This is the kind of news that I’d like to hear from all our media. Like so many services, reporting should not be done for profit but for the satisfaction that reporters derive from telling stories truthfully to the best of their ability. To this end, I hope you’ll continue to do what appears to be wonderful reporting on local news and steer clear of international stories for which you’ve thus far been unwilling to accept reports from both sides. I’m not giving you a real name or email address because this message is only to you and if you wish to reply, I think it should be in public.
PEACE!
Dear Loyal Reader,
First, thank you for being a reader and for your honest comments. We truly do appreciate them. Our mission, as you are aware, is “Truth has a Voice” … we see our role as ethical journalists to give that truth a voice, and to reflect the truth for those who do not have a voice in our world. As to international stories, those we do write are usually focused on climate change, and efforts to protect democracy and the Rule of Law. For that we do not apologize.
We’re not sure there is another truthful side to either of those issues. That the climate of our planet is changing is an irrefutable fact; around the world and it is apparent here in the Central Colorado Rockies.
That democracy is under stress both domestically and around the world is also a fact. If you refer to our reporting on the violent efforts in places such as Myanmar or Ukraine to snuff out democratically-elected governments, we believe that this is important for our readers to understand. I personally have had many years of experience leading a national non-profit working with Ukraine on inter-country adoption issues, and my foreign exchange sons (one from UKraine, the other the son I sent there for a foreign exchange year) have made me aware of what the UKrainians are fighting for; the survival of their culture and the right to live in peace. If there is another side of that, well, I also know Russia very well: https://arkvalleyvoice.com/the-answers-to-what-russia-is-doing/
As domestic terrorism threats have grown across this country, all of us have a responsibility to see that the spread of violence, intolerance, and hate here or anywhere is the antithesis of true freedom and democracy.
We surely hope that you continue as a reader, and we assure you that reporting so that “truth has a voice’ remains our goal.