Heads up, Baltimore Brew readers: If you’ve ever thought about kicking in some bucks to support our independent watchdog journalism – this is a very good time.

Between now and December 31, your tax-deductible donations to The Brew – up to $1,000 – will be matched by NewsMatch, a national grassroots fundraising campaign. Go HERE to donate.

[UPDATE: The matching period has ended. To those who supported us, THANK YOU ***SO*** MUCH! Although your contribution won’t be doubled now, you can still make one. Either sign up for automatic monthly payments or send a one-time check. (Please make your check out to “Fusion Partnerships” with “Baltimore Brew” in the notation line at the bottom left. Fusion Partnerships is our fiscal sponsor, allowing us to accept tax-free donations.) Mail it to Fusion Partnerships Inc., 1601 Guilford Ave, 2 South, Baltimore, MD 21202]

If you instead sign up to become a Brew member (automatically making a monthly contribution of $5, $10, $15, $25, $50 or $100), NewsMatch will match your donation at the full-year level. (For example, if you sign up for the $10 level, NewsMatch sends us $120.)

If you’re already a Brew member – THANK  YOU! – NewsMatch will be doubling your November and December contributions.

There are plenty of ways to support us, though none are required to see our stories, which are all free to read online. You’ll find no paywall here.

Eyes on the City

What you will find at The Brew is original, award-winning reporting and smart analysis about Baltimore that you won’t see anywhere else.

Our coverage holds City Hall accountable, documents patterns of cronyism and inequity, gathers information and perspectives that include disinvested and red-lined communities, and gives political spin and other blah-blah a hard pass.

It’s not all gimlet-eyed scrutiny here either – promising grassroots projects and idealistic changemakers turn up in The Brew, too.

It’s a formula that works.

Over the last 10 years, we’ve become one of the city’s most trusted sources for news, now read by about 55,000 site users a month, followed by nearly 40,000 on Twitter and drawing roughly 1.6 million pageviews so far in  2019.

How did Baltimore Brew come to be one of the nearly 200 participants in NewsMatch 2019, along with news organizations like Mother Jones and ProPublica?

We belong to one of the sponsoring organizations, the Institute for Nonprofit News, whose staffers kindly reminded us to take a break from reporting on occasion to promote our work and finances.

They told us how, since 2016, NewsMatch has been pooling foundation funding and getting it to nonprofit newsrooms. Last year, NewsMatch became the largest-ever grassroots fundraising campaign for nonprofit news, raising more than $7.6 million.

Participating funders include the Miami Foundation, Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, Ethics & Excellence Journalism Foundation, and many others both national and local.

The purpose of this tip jar for good reporting, NewsMatch organizers say, is nothing less than to strengthen our democracy.

“Every day, journalists in nonprofit newsrooms dig deeper into the raw news of the day to deliver in-depth and investigative reporting that engages communities, advances solutions and demands accountability,” they say, adding:

“This journalism informs. This journalism matters. And this is journalism worth supporting.”