Howdy everyone, Chaz Nuttycombe here, Founder and Executive Director of State Navigate.

It’s now been one year since State Navigate launched its first state website! On April 3rd, 2025, we launched the district summary pages in South Carolina. Since then, State Navigate has launched in several states, launched many features, and become the most accurate pollster in the country during the 2025 election cycle. I’m deeply proud of the State Navigate staff, board, and committee members who have worked diligently to deliver a compass for state legislatures to the public.

As State Navigate looks to expand our operations nationwide, we’ve looked for more partners to help us fund the work necessary to not only make sure that we have enough runway as a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan nonprofit organization, but to help us complete our goal of being a ubiquitous organization. We’re deeply appreciative of our current partners, grants, and donors who have helped us with the former goal, but unfortunately, we’re coming up short on the latter.

We’re witnessing a changing landscape in the worlds of nonprofits and data journalism. Over the last year, we’ve seen financial support for data journalism dwindle with the shutdown of FiveThirtyEight, layoffs at the Washington Post, and more. We’ve also seen support for nonprofits similar to State Navigate, which rely on generous donors and donor networks, struggle to maintain operating costs.

To ensure that State Navigate can extend its funding runway in the long term, create more content, and expand nationwide, we’ve decided to put most of our data behind subscription paywalls. With this change, we’ve eliminated the funding minimums required to open in new states and have instead set them as fundraising goals.

We will still keep much of our content free, including the work of our nonprofit newsroom, some of our interactives, and a tool that lets voters find out who is on their ballot for state legislatures and where to find their social media and websites, which district they reside in, and who their incumbents are.

Subscriptions for State Navigate will also be similar to donations, in that subscribers will have the option to attribute their subscription to an individual state, making their dollars count toward that state’s revenue and powering our team’s work in those states.

State Navigate remains the only organization in the country dedicated to data journalism for state legislatures and state governance. We hope you’ll become a subscriber today, not only to enjoy the fruits of our labor, but also to guide our team on which states we should operate in.

Ultimately, we want to open everywhere, and we would ideally like to one day return to providing all our content to the public for free. However, we must navigate the difficulties data journalism is facing at this moment, so, for the foreseeable future, we will rely on a mixed model of subscription revenue and tax-deductible donations, grants, and sponsorships.

We’d like to thank our general audience for their support in our first year of operations, and we hope to continue serving as your compass for state legislatures across the country. Thank you.

Yours in service,

Chaz Nuttycombe

Founder & Executive Director of State Navigate