Singapore’s next general elections are coming! Well, maybe not so soon, but you can be sure that The Online Citizen will be there to cover it. And we need YOUR HELP to do it!

It has been TOC’s tradition to cover every election with distinction, and since General Elections 2011, we believe we have done Singaporeans proud.

1) We broke ground with the first Face-to-Face forum, which brought together every opposition party participating in GE2011 for a no-holds-barred discussion on key national issues.


2) On occasion, we had to call out our friends from mainstream media, when they choose to ignore the facts in their face and push… we are not sure what kind of political agenda.


3) We also did the dig on a certain party that we believed was feeding and bussing supporters to rally sites to make up the numbers.


4) We broke the record again with our second Face-to-Face forum, which saw two candidates for the Presidential Election 2011 go at each other with a ferocity seldom seen in Singapore politics.


5) And above all, we remained fair and impartial to all parties, even as we continue to be critical, including for the by-elections in Hougang (2012) and Punggol-East (2013).


But we could not have done this without YOU, our readers and supporters, who believed in what we have to say and chipped in to make sure we had the funds to keep going. Our election coverage was truly by Singaporeans, for Singaporeans, and we intend to keep it that way.

All money raised in this crowd-funding project will go towards building TOC’s capability in professional online journalism, and enhancing the diversity of an open media environment.

Your generous contributions will go towards supporting TOC in its coverage for the general election. We will be raising funds in tiers:

First S$5,000 - Gets us ready by defraying our administrative costs for running our election coverage. Server cost (because traffic peaks at every election), equipment rental, venue rental, transport - all the little bits and pieces that will keep us ticking.

Next S$5,000 - Lets us develop and conduct one or more citizen journalism workshops, to build a pool of citizen journalists capable of contributing to the diversity of content on TOC, and be positively and accurately engaged in producing and consuming online content.

Next S$20,000 - Supplement our existing editorial team, and hire and train additional full-time reporters, for the next six months to that we would be able to effectively cover election rallies, party walkabouts and other media events. Also goes towards getting us an office space where we can function as a news team.

Next S$20,000 - Keep us on top for another six months. But don't hesitate to help us reach this amount fast - we plan to keep our new staff committed to the cause and continue to produce quality news content and analysis that has been a TOC trademark.

TOC has always had the good fortune of getting help from our dedicated volunteers, but we recognise that this cannot go on forever. At some point, we will need to have a dedicated team that we can call on to connect with the newsmakers, work the shifts, hit the ground, and come back with stories and photographs that keep you, our audience, on top. Doing so means they can only have one day job – with TOC, as part of the news team.

Even with a team of dedicated journalists and volunteers, we cannot be everywhere. That is when a pool of citizen journalists, ready with their mobile phones and trained to put a quick and accurate photo-story together, will add to our aim for complete coverage of a major event.