Support The Xylom

The monthly budget for The Xylom is roughly $9,750. However, a severe budget crunch in 2025 completely depleted our financial reserves and forced us to take voluntary pay reductions.

Although we have climbed out of the deficit in March 2026, to get The Xylom back on the path to sustainability, we need to grow our monthly revenue to $10,000, with roughly $6,000 (60%) coming from readers. Using our revenue per member figure of roughly $18 and deducting one-time donations, that translates to a goal of roughly 350 paying members.

👇Here's a rough budget breakdown:

Staff Salaries: $84,600 ($104,600 if funding is available)

• Publisher and Editor: $32,400
• Managing Editor: $25,200
• Editor-at-Large (project-based): $9,000
• Two Editorial Fellows: $18,000
• Development Director (part-time, future hire): $20,000

Freelancers: $18,000

• Our rates start at $300 per piece, and we accept roughly 4-5 stories per month: ($1,500/month or $12,000/year)

Hosting & Infrastructure: $1,200

• Domain: $32.5/year
• Ghost: ($46/ month or $460/year)
• Google Workspace: ($42/ month or $504/year)
• Zapier: ($20/ month or $240/year)

Rent: $0

• Mailbox: ($37.5/ month or $450/year; paid upfront in FY 2026)

Transaction Fees: $240

• Stripe: ($20/ month or $240/year)

Insurance: $1,000

• Liability: ($913 in FY 2026)

Fiscal Sponsor Fee: $12,000

• 10% of our revenue ($1,000/month or $12,000/year) goes to bookkeeping, filing taxes, and maintaining our CRM.

• “Working with The Xylom enabled us to inform our readers about a topic we haven’t had the capacity or expertise to report on — how local Atlanta-area doctors are incorporating an understanding of climate change into their work with patients.”
  — Sophia Qureshi, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, 285 South
• “There are few places to get critical English-language climate and economy reporting by and from Asian perspectives. I think [The Xylom is] doing something unique by connecting those stories to shared issues across the U.S. South, and that’s why I support their work and hope others will too.”
  — Isaac Sevier, a member in California
• “The Xylom boldly continues to report on climate, science, and our environment with a unique local + global lens by a talented Asian-American team. For that reason, I am proud to support their reporting and learn more about how we can all contribute to a better world!”
  — Aiya Ross, a member in Georgia
• “I have watched countless local formerly-independent journalism outlets be acquired, consolidated, and gutted as plutocrats use media ownership to deny readers the opportunity to hear and see fair and balanced journalism for themselves.
  The Xylom is timely, it is insightful, and it is important. The work Alex and his excellent team do to bring meaningful stories to our attention is worthy of acknowledgment, I am proud to support it, and you should too.”
  — Jake, a member in Iowa

Yes! The Xylom is a fiscally sponsored project of the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity based in the District of Columbia, EIN 30-0100369. All donations made to The Xylom are tax- deductible to the extent allowed by law.

The Xylom is not a separate legal entity. We operate as an internal program of the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation, which maintains full discretion and control over our project's activities and finances.

All funds raised for The Xylom are held and managed by the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. Our fiscal sponsor is responsible for all financial reporting, including the issuance of tax receipts to donors.

We are required to clearly disclose our affiliation with the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation in all grant proposals, solicitations, and published materials.

The Alternative Newsweekly Foundation reserves the right to terminate the fiscal sponsorship relationship in accordance with our agreement and their policies.

For any questions regarding our fiscal sponsorship arrangement, or to request a tax receipt, please contact ANF’s executive director, executivedirector@altnewsfoundation.org.

Yes, the IRS recognizes The Xylom's fiscal host Alternative Newsweekly Foundation as a public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Thanks for asking!

In a word: yes.

Stripe and PayPal use Secure Sockets Layer technology to encrypt all data submitted to and from our donations web page. SSL renders donors’ personal information, including credit card information, unreadable to any outsiders. SSL is supported by all major web browsers. (To find out if your browser is connected to a secure transaction server, look for a locked padlock in your web address bar.) Additionally, your personal information will be stored on Stripe and PayPal’s servers, which are heavily guarded, both physically and electronically. To further shield your credit card numbers, Stripe and PayPal do not directly connect their firewall-protected servers to the internet.

No, The Xylom doesn't sell, trade or rent email addresses or physical addresses.

Sure! Call us at 678-871-9245 or email info@thexylom.com.