FOIA Fund

Requests under the Freedom of Information Act are expensive, and they're not free for media companies – contrary to popular belief – when FOIAs are made to local or state governments. (Only FOIAs to the federal government are free for media companies.)

The Alexandria Times is a community newspaper that seeks to shine a light on power of all kinds in our community, but we have a small profit margin and have a small budget for FOIAs. Having more money to spend on FOIAs will enable us to do a better job as a community watchdog for Alexandria. It's in every resident's interest for your local newspaper to do investigative reporting and to publish our findings.

While contributors to this fund will not be able to tell the Times what to FOIA, we pledge that every penny donated to this fund will either be spent on FOIA requests or returned.

In addition, at the end of each quarter, we will print a FOIA fund accounting update in the paper that will tell:

--total funds raised through this gofundme,
--money raised during the current quarter,
--total funds spent through this gofundme, 
--money spent during the current quarter.
--what the remaining balance is in the FOIA Fund
--what materials we have FOIAed and links to stories generated from the FOIAs.

Please note that contributions to the Times FOIA Fund are not tax deductible.