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The UpTake Institute needs broad and deep grassroots financial support in order to fulfill itsmission of citizen journalism. Your tax-deductible donation will ensure that our journalists havethe tools to bring you stories you won't see anywhere else.

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The Institute is a media and technology services organization dedicated to advancing democracy throughcitizen journalism. The principal activity of the Institute is to promote citizen journalism by trainingand equipping citizens to cover stories in their communities, with special attention to coverage of thepolitical process and electoral politics. The Institute provides video journalism training and equipmentto cover key events -- primarily through digital video photography. The Institute is focused on recruitingand training citizen journalists.

In addition to training citizen journalists, the Institute educates the public on citizen journalism andhow it contributes to public discourse. The Institute also advocates for citizen journalism legitimacy asa complement to reporting from legacy media such as TV, radio and newspapers. The Institute works to obtainpress passes for formal political events and also arrange coverage of ancillary events not typically coveredby the legacy media to give the public a more complete and uncensored view of our electoral process.

The video news coverage produced by our citizen journalists is made available to the public through aweb site operated by the Institute's sister organization, The UpTake, a nonprofit social welfare organizationdescribed in Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the "Code").

The UpTake is a recognized national leader in online video-based news reporting. The UpTake is a citizen-fueledvideo news gathering organization that uses the Internet as its broadcast medium. Since its inception in late 2007,The UpTake has explored the frontier of social media and news gathering. Our website is built on a social networkingand video publishing platform that allows us to scale our coverage and organize our members/journalists. Along withtraditional video cameras, we use cell phone cameras loaded with remote live broadcasting software to instantlypublish our work to the web. We publicize our work using our own website, a large Twitter network, partnershipsor working relationships with YouTube, affiliated media outlets in the Media Consortium, the BBC, CNN and others.For breaking news and ongoing stories, we often illustrate our reporters' progress with an online map that showsthe location of the events we are covering or have covered.

The UpTake is considered a pioneer in online live-broadcast participatory journalism, building a community aroundour coverage and raising more that $40,000 in the first half of 2009 through our audience alone. People have watchedmore than 20 million minutes of our live event coverage. We've hosted thousands of people a day simultaneously on ourlive chat room, and filed our 1,000th story in May of 2009. We have been on the cutting edge of technology and journalismfor the last 2 years, and we intend to stay there.

The UpTake is a 501(c)(4), non-partisan, non-profit organization. Donation to The UpTake are highly appreciated,but not tax deductible. If you want to make a tax-deductible donation, please consider donating to the UpTake Institute above.

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