FOIA GRAS Reader Survey
A quick reader survey and a meta post with a link to donate without subscribing
I’ve created a quick 7 question survey to help calibrate the content I am writing and make sure it aligns somewhat with what subscribers would like hear about. If you click the button below, you can take the survey. It should take less than a minute and I would really appreciate your feedback. The survey is private (as in only I can see the results).
On a second note, I’ve had some readers reach out to me and ask how to donate to the site without the recurring billing that Substack requires. If you’d like to do that, I created an account with something called buymeacoffee. If you want to do a one-time donation, you can follow the link below or click here. If you want to make it anonymous, check the box for “Private” when you donate.
As a reminder: I will always make all posts available for free to all paid and unpaid subscribers. So donating or becoming a member is completely optional. I do not paywall anything but I do close comments on stories to paid members only after about 30 days to avoid spam.
If you donate, funds go towards the following:
Legal fees associated with talking to lawyers and experts about various subjects in local governance
Labor costs to contractors on Upwork who do a lot of the digitization of documents. For instance, I’m spending $200 right now to have someone digitize the full list of all expenditures for all School Districts in Illinois.
Google Drive and Google costs for email, document storage, etc.
All the various accouterments of printing and scanning documents: printer paper, toner, manila file folders, etc
Taxes and Business costs. FOIA GRAS is a single-member LLC owned by me, Tom Hayden, and I have to pay all sorts of annual fees to the lawyers, state registrations, and the IRS. I also pay Reed Accounting here in Evanston to do my taxes. I highly recommend them if you need professional accountants
This isn’t a lucrative business for me and is a hobby and I’m able to cover all these costs myself, but any donation you might make will help keep the ship afloat, even if it is a few bucks.
Wait, in your list of expenses I don't see the "Grecian Kitchen Fund"? Can I earmark my donation to just pay for your gyros delivery?
I took the survey but forgot to say that I'd love to know if there is info out there that separates kids grades/test scores/discipline records based on both race and economic status -- as in how do the well off black and brown kids do in comparison to the poor black and brown kids? Same for white kids.
When the district is throwing around all this money, would it have more impact to primarily focus on programs that alleviate the disadvantages of poverty? Honest question since the vetting process of this board leaves something to be desired. Though given the segregated nature of the different wards I can imagine there might not be enough info to make any distinction if race and economic status basically overlap.