Power January: Help Kensington Voice start 2026 at full strength

Kensington Voice is the only newsroom reporting on this neighborhood from the inside — and we're raising $20,000 to fund January.

Here's the truth: institutional grants, even when secured, can take months to arrive. Payroll doesn't wait. To stay fully staffed and reporting on January 1, we need to pre-fund January together.

With $20,000 by December 31, we start 2026 at full speed — no delays, no interruptions, thanks to on-the-ground reporting powered by you.

What your donation powers

Your donation directly funds the work that defines Kensington Voice: independent and trusted local journalism that centers accountability, community solutions, neighborhood voices, joy and resilience, useful resources, and more.

1. Accountability

Accountability reporting takes time — and time costs money. Our reporters spend days, sometimes weeks, listening before a story even forms. That approach has allowed us to expose failures that shape daily life in Kensington: the breakdown of the Kensington Wellness Court, dangerous staffing shortages inside Philadelphia’s prisons, multiple jail and prison deaths, neglected hazardous streetlight outage complaints, and political decisions that harm the neighborhood — from the opioid trust rejecting federal funds for Kensington to a state legislator admitting he didn’t know children lived in the neighborhood. We’ve tracked the city’s shifting plans for Riverview Wellness Village, pushed for transparency in new opioid grant programs, uncovered how the overnight curfew has cut into workers’ paychecks, and revealed how rape survivors face systemic barriers to accessing sexual-assault exams. This is deep reporting rooted in care, time, and proximity.

2. Community solutions

Kensington is full of people building real, long-term solutions — not PR-friendly projects, but community-led efforts shaped by lived experience. Your support helps us document programs like Ride Free, which employs returning citizens to interrupt cycles of incarceration, Fab Youth Philly, which builds youth leadership and job skills, Klean Kensington, which mobilizes neighbors to clean their blocks and take back shared spaces, and a partnership between Esperanza Health Center and NKCDC's Cure Violence program, which hosts a free basketball league for men 18-40. These are blueprints for what works: homegrown initiatives improving safety, connection, opportunity, and pride.

3. Neighborhood voices

People who live here have a lot to say, and we make sure the city hears them. Your support elevates first-person pieces like a mother explaining how SNAP and SNAP-Ed cuts deepen hunger in Kensington, a neighbor reflecting on the hopes and realities of their addiction recovery, a long-time resident's call to end “drug tourism," and teenagers sharing their perspectives on environmental justice and resource disparities through photo essays and poetry. These stories reshape not just what the public sees — but whose experiences matter.

4. Joy & resilience

Kensington is more than crisis clickbait — and our photojournalism shows that truth every week. Through our Photos of Kensington series, we document moments that rarely make headlines: teens learning carpentry through a free youth program, neighbors celebrating the opening of a Latin-band cultural center, Puerto Rican pride on full display, the Old Lady Gang's legendary water gun fights, and everyday scenes of creativity, connection, and community love. These images reject the “poverty porn” version of Kensington and show the neighborhood as it truly is when the other cameras leave.

5. Resources

Every week, our bilingual newsletter pulls together the information neighbors actually need: free community meals and holiday giveaways, public meetings, youth job opportunities, arts events, cleanup efforts, library programs, housing workshops, utility clinics, and city-service updates. It’s a mix of events, resources, and urgent notices rarely covered elsewhere — but essential to daily life in the neighborhood.

Tax information

Kensington Voice is a fiscally sponsored project of Movement Alliance Project, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization. All donations are tax-deductible. Tax ID: 26-0307123.

To donate by check, make it payable to Movement Alliance Project with Kensington Voice in the memo and mail to:

Movement Alliance Project
924 Cherry St., 5th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107

For stock or ACH donations, email fundraising@movementalliance.org or call 215-821-9632.