Support

Sponsors get named. They never get sold for.

An Illinois not-for-profit corporation. No federal tax status has been determined. The line that decides whether money is tax-free or taxable — and whether it endangers exempt status at all — is the line between an ACKNOWLEDGMENT and an ADVERTISEMENT, and it is drawn in the Internal Revenue Code rather than in anybody's taste. IRC §513(i) makes a qualified sponsorship payment tax-free where what the sponsor receives is a mere acknowledgment: name, logo, location, contact information, and a value-neutral description of what they do. The moment that becomes qualitative or comparative language, pricing or savings information, an endorsement, or a call to action, it is advertising — unrelated business taxable income, priced on attention, and a different thing legally. This standard makes that boundary executable rather than a matter of somebody remembering it at 11pm.

What a sponsor receives

Their legal name, spelled the way they spell it.
Their logo or mark, rendered at a fixed size we control.
Their location — city and state.
A value-neutral description of what they make or do, in plain declarative language.
Their web address, as a plain link.
The dates of the support period.

What a sponsor never receives

A qualitative or comparative adjective of any kind — best, leading, trusted, award-winning, top-rated, number one, premier, finest. Not one, not once. This is the single most common way an acknowledgment becomes an advertisement.
Price, savings, discount, or any value claim.
A call to action — buy, shop, order, sign up, book, call now, visit today, don't miss.
An endorsement by Outpost, express or implied, of their product, service or organization.
An inducement to purchase, sell or use anything.
Placement priced on attention: no click pricing, no impression pricing, no performance pricing.
Targeting of any kind — no behavioural data, no interest inference, no lookalikes, no geographic targeting beyond the sponsor's own stated location.
Placement inside or beside a civic record, an official's page, a source citation, an emergency notice, or anything on a children's surface.

Because it is where the law actually is, and because a project that teaches people to notice persuasion cannot run persuasion in its own margins. The Screens Have Makers volume teaches a seven-year-old to ask who made this and what they want; a page that then sells them something in a gold box has taught the opposite lesson more effectively than the volume taught its own.

Where the money goes

Sponsorship and any promotional revenue accrue to Outpost App LLC, the taxable entity. Never to Outpost Civic Education NFP.

The cap. Sponsorship and promotional revenue may not exceed 25% of total revenue. An organization that needs sponsors more than it needs readers will eventually write for sponsors. The cap is a structural answer to a pressure that no amount of good intent survives.

Nothing here is measured

Nothing on this surface is measured for pricing. No click tracking, no impression counting, no attention metric, no third-party SDK, no pixel.

Because a sponsorship acknowledgment cannot honestly be priced on attention — there is nothing to click and no action to take. Sponsorship here is priced as support for a period, flat, the way a public broadcaster prices an underwriting spot. That removes the entire measurement apparatus and with it the entire surveillance apparatus.

Some sponsors will not accept an untracked placement, and those sponsors are not for us. Saying so here is cheaper than discovering it in a negotiation.

Where no sponsor may ever appear

No acknowledgment, sponsor mark or promotional unit may appear on these surfaces, at any size, in any position.

/education-library — The library is the product of the mission. A sponsor beside a claim is a sponsor beside the evidence.
/surveillance — A page naming companies by their public record may not carry a paid placement from any company. The conflict is total and it does not matter that the sponsor is a different company.
/organize — A page that names targets and demands may not be funded by anybody who could be one.
/watch — The lobbying and public-money beats. Same conflict, stated the same way.
/politicians — The officials registry. Track E names this one directly.
/transparency — The records procedures. A reader following a FOIA lever must not be sold to on the way.
/games — Children's surface. No advertisement to a minor, ever — Track E, absolute.
/academy — Children's surface. Track E forbids any advertisement to a minor, absolutely, and the Academy is where the youngest readers arrive.
/story-shelf — Children's surface — public-domain classics read by families. A sponsor mark beside a children's story is the exact thing Track E rules out.
/practice — Children's surface. The practices are done off-screen by a child with a grown-up, and nothing about that moment gets sold.
/founders-library — The archive. Track E names it directly.
/ask — The assistant answers questions with citations. A sponsor in that frame corrupts the answer's standing.

Current supporters

No sponsor has been accepted. The standard ships before the first conversation on purpose — a rate card written after a sponsor asks is a rate card written by the sponsor.

What a reader can be charged for

Nothing that carries information. Not a course, not a bill, not a filing, not a phone number. Money buys how the app looks to you and how your own corner of it is arranged — and the whole of that list, with the reason for every item on it, is on one page.

Read the disclosure

Our donor policy, every governance document a charity of this kind is expected to have, and exactly where we stand on each one, are at /governance. None is adopted yet, and that page says so first.

What is not built yet

No sponsor has been accepted and no acknowledgment is live. The registry is deliberately empty and the standard exists first.
There is no rate card. Pricing a support period is a founder decision with a tax question attached, and it needs the Outpost App LLC banking separation done first.
Counsel has not reviewed this standard. It is drawn from the text of IRC §513(i) and the Track E ruling, and a lawyer should read it before the first payment is accepted — not after.
There is no intake form. A sponsor conversation starts by writing to us, which is the correct amount of friction for the first several.