Hello friends,

As we shared last week, The Flame has a hugely exciting announcement: we are opening a brick and mortar newsroom! A real life, offline, in-person Buckeye Flame space is coming to Ohio this very summer! 🗞

Having an office brings immediate benefits to our journalism. Our team will be able to meet and work together – and our team just keeps growing as we welcome interns and new writers to The Flame, including the country’s only known “Rural LGBTQ+” beat reporter! We will also be able to connect more with you, our readers and community, and we’re already looking forward to hosting you in our new space.

We invited our readers to help us lease the space by fundraising to cover the cost of our newsroom’s rent and utilities bills for the next year.

And we hit our goal in a matter of days, raising $6,540 to lease the newsroom for our first year. 😱

We are truly humbled by your support — THANK YOU!

The Flame just turned four years old over the weekend. 🎂 Growing to have an actual office is so exciting and we’re immensely grateful to our readers for quickly making this dream possible!

If you’d like to be part of the incredible momentum of our birthday campaign, becoming a recurring donor today will help us dream even bigger as Ohio’s LGBTQ+ newsroom!

All month if you start a $25+/month contribution, we’ll send you a very comfy Buckeye Flame hoodie! Monthly gifts of any amount are HUGELY important for our work as they provide consistency that we can budget around to plan our reporting and news coverage.

Description: A black hoodie with an illustration of a yellow, orange and red flame in the top right of the front of the sweater. Around the flame design it reads "The Buckeye Flame, Ohio's LGBTQ+ Newsroom." This design was created by a 9-year-old supporter of The Buckeye Flame!

Thank you for all of your support over these past four years, and thank you for celebrating with us. Happy Pride! ❤