Donate to Reconstructing Dayton Today

Next week is Christmas and it will be an odd one. Gatherings will be smaller, less festive, and there won’t be as many gifts. If you were told a year ago that a pandemic would cripple our economy and shut down businesses, schools, and services, would you believe it? It’s been a tough year for everyone, and although a vaccine has begun distribution, things probably will not return to normal until at least spring. We will still have to wear masks, social distance, and limit our activities.

For us at Reconstructing Dayton, the pandemic could not have hit at a worse time. Our major initiative to bring ranked-choice voting to Dayton requires the collection of physical signatures. Once the first person signs, we will have 90 days to collect 1,249 more. It will be difficult, but we’re confident that once the vaccine is distributed to more people throughout the winter, the outbreak will subside and we can begin that process. If you would like to volunteer to help circulate petitions, please shoot us an e-mail or find us on Twitter or Facebook.

In the meantime, we could use additional funding to help us keep this initiative rolling and evangelize our petition before we start collecting signatures. The primary benefactors of Reconstructing Dayton are small business owners and they have been hit the hardest by the pandemic. So we’re asking that you give a Christmas gift to Reconstructing Dayton by donating today. We’re a 501(c)4, which allows us to lobby and endorse candidates, but the downside is that we are not eligible for big grants like traditional nonprofits. This means we rely on grassroots donations to keep our research and our initiatives rolling. We’re not going to blast you with a giant notification begging for donations like Wikipedia and other sites when you click on every page of our site, but we do ask that you add Reconstructing Dayton to your Christmas list if you value our work.

Going in to 2021 we have some big plans—ranked choice voting first among them—so if you have the means, please contribute in what way you can.