Dear Friend,

I don’t say thank you often enough or write pretty thank you cards from the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, which publishes InDepthNH.org.

No calligraphy and you would never be able to read my writing because even I can’t.

Many of you thank me for not sending cards and insist we spend our time and money doing what we are much better at – reporting news that matters to you without fear or favor.

A friend and source of mine mentioned to me the other day that he had clicked the donate button during NewsMatch as so many of you did. It was a very generous donation, and I hadn’t noticed. I was happy because I respect his work and happy that I hadn’t noticed.

While I am meticulous about documenting our donations (as we must because NewsMatch audits every donation as they must), I try to distance myself as best I can from donors’ names because of my reporting. We do it without fear or favor. There should be a firewall and will be as we grow this business to include a fulltime director of development. But for now that’s me and wonderful volunteers Beverly Stoddard and Bob Charest.

As my favorite nonprofit news editor taught me, “We will bite the hand that feeds us.” It’s our job. It’s our mission. It’s our passion. My friend knows that because he has known my work and the work of Paula Tracy and Garry Rayno for decades. He trusts us to report the news without fear or favor, whether he clicks donate or not. (I’m really glad he did.)

We also have the best columnists in the state.

OK, so back to the thank yous.

Thank you, New Hampshire. Because of you we get to keep going, to keep doing what we love and what we believe is truly, truly needed today in New Hampshire and the country – reporting unbiased, indepth and investigative news.

It’s like winning at Go Fish, the only card game I really love because I so enjoy the concept of You get what you want, you get to go again.

OK, I am not that good at poker and my grandson can beat me at almost every card game, including Go Fish.

 And your support, your donations, your goodwill – you let us keep going. I promise we won’t stop. We can’t stop.

I just checked again recently with the Department of Employment Security and news jobs have dropped 69 percent since the year 2000 in New Hampshire.

The last time I checked, they were only down 63 percent.

What happens when we are all gone? That would – or will – be some scary movie.

Back to the thank yous.

During NewsMatch in November and December, you folks donated $36,483, donations of $1,000 or less, which was matched by NewsMatch at $14,000 and a generous local donor at $25,000.

NewsMatch is open to all members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. We are the only news outlet in New Hampshire to meet their gold standard of ethics and excellence.

NewsMatch is funded by the Democracy Fund, the Knight Foundation and many others who care about the future of news, as I know you do.

We also had a separate $5,000 donation from Northeast Delta Dental, who has been supporting us since nearly the beginning in 2015. Thank you Northeast Delta Dental and thank you all.

And those donors are all separate from a very generous grant we received earlier last year from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Geoffrey E. Clark and Martha Fuller Clark Fund to help us build a sustainable business path forward for local news.

The Geoffrey E. Clark and Martha Fuller Clark $25,000 grant is being used as we speak to bring together business leaders, philanthropists, journalists, entrepreneurs and like-minded people who care passionately about the future of news.

This grant is dedicated to solving the most pressing problem facing almost all news outlets: Sustainability – How to make money reporting unbiased news that matters.

Email me for more information on the Sustainable News Summit coming in May at nancywestnews@gmail.com.

Want to show your age? I do, always.

Thank you from the bottom of my Boogity boogity boogity boogity, boogity boogity shoot.

Email me if you get the reference and I’ll send a link to the song tonight on our free newsletter.

This is going to continue to be an amazing ride. Come along. Help build the future of sustainable news with us.

Thank you, Nancy West