Forest Hills Connection Needs Your Support

by Marlene Berlin

Where would you get your neighborhood news without the Forest Hills Connection?

Where would you learn the latest on the Saul Centers project on Connecticut Avenue, how Pepco is working (or not) to bring power to our homes, and get the first word of new businesses opening on Connecticut Avenue (Mark Furstenberg’s Bread Furst? You saw it here first).

Where would you find local writers like Marge Rachlin telling us about our wild furry, feathered and six-legged friends? Or Lindsay Damon, who gives us a view of life on the road as a cyclist? Many of you have enjoyed Lee Armfield Cannon’s profiles of Forest Hills artists, such as Setsuko Ono, whose sculptures adorn her front yard on Albemarle Street. And articles on neighborhood history by Ann Kessler, Barbara Bates and Anne Rollins have had an incredible response.

Readers have told us how much they appreciate the Forest Hills Connection, and that it has embedded itself into the fabric of our community in only one and a-half years since its founding.

We are asking you to support this informative and award-winning publication. Is it worth $5, $10, $15 or more a month to make sure it continues to connect us as a community?

Please make a tax-deductible donation of $60, $120, $180 or more through PayPal. You can also write a check to the Forest Hills Neighborhood Alliance, our sponsoring organization and a 501(c)(3). Please mail your check to Marlene Berlin, 4526 30th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20008.

The money goes toward operating expenses. As our readership grows, so do the demands on our site and our time.

We have made great strides in a very short time in growing our readership from an email list of 500 to more 3,000 readers and 7,000 pageviews, on average, per month. We started with a goal of posting 2-3 pieces per week. Now we publish at least once each weekday, usually more. The time webmaster Tracy and I devote to this project has grown exponentially as well. We’d like to keep growing to become more attractive to advertisers so we can rely less on fundraising appeals. This means more writers, more editing, more readers, and more time.

We need your support to keep our website operating at its consistently high level with great layout, style and stories, with Tracy as webmaster (and the best partner), and me as editor. We want to keep doing this and with your support, we can move from being a mostly volunteer effort to a financially-sustainable publication. The money we raise will go toward hosting expenses, upgrading the website’s software and features, paying the webmaster a stipend, and hiring a fundraiser and events planner.

To help the Forest Hills Connection continue growing, we are asking you to become partners in this endeavor through your donation. And we thank you for your support.