Support the work
Help keep the TrueCOLA Project public.
We publish, every month, in every congressional district, the dollar gap between what Americans earn and what living actually costs.
Inflation is reported as a percentage. Bills arrive in dollars. TrueCOLA shows what living costs and what income has left, for every congressional district, every month. The reports are free for everyone, and gifts from readers keep them that way.
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Payments are handled by PayPal. You can pay with a PayPal account or a card. TrueCOLA Project never sees or stores your card number or bank details.
Where your gift goes
What your gift supports
TrueCOLA Project is a small nonprofit with a large job: every month, the real cost of living, in dollars, for every district in the country. There is no advertising, no subscription, and no data for sale. Gifts from readers are the only thing that covers the cost of doing the work and giving it away.
We do not lobby, endorse, or advocate. We measure, and we publish.
The monthly report, every month.
Each month, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the Consumer Price Index, the TrueCOLA pipeline pulls fresh figures from federal sources, prices the cost basket in dollars, sets it against income for seven household types, and publishes the result the next business day. Gifts pay for the computing, the checking, and the publishing that make that deadline every time.
A page for every one of the 435 districts.
A national average can look nothing like your street. So the same arithmetic runs for every congressional district and every state, and each one gets its own page, updated with each report. Keeping 435 district pages and 50 state pages current, fast, and reachable is most of what the site costs to run.
Free for everyone, with no strings.
Anyone can read the report online or download the PDF with no email address, no account, and no paywall. The published figures are also released as open data files that researchers, reporters, and developers can use without asking. Gifts are what let the work stay free instead of being sold.
Independence.
The TrueCOLA Project is funded by in-kind contributions and individual donations. No funder reviews findings before they are published, and no sponsor picks which districts or figures appear. Rankings come from one formula applied to every district. Many small gifts from readers are what keep it that way.
A method anyone can check.
Every published number is produced by the same documented method from public federal data, and the methodology is posted in full. Part of each gift goes to the review and verification that run before a report is released, so the figures can be trusted and traced.
What comes next.
Gifts also fund the work to extend the report: more detail on the parts of the basket that drive the margin, clearer ways to read the figures for one place, and tools that let an AI assistant answer questions from the published report. Each of those ships free, like everything else here.
Any amount helps
What a gift does
A small monthly gift covers the hosting and delivery of the district pages people open every day. A larger gift funds the computing and review behind a full monthly release. Every gift, at any size, is used only for the work described on this page and the programs listed on the Programs page.
If you would rather give in another way, or you represent an organization that wants to support the project, write to us.
New for 2026
Your gift can be deducted even if you do not itemize
Starting with the 2026 tax year, federal law lets people who take the standard deduction also deduct cash gifts to public charities: up to $1,000 for a single filer and up to $2,000 for a married couple filing jointly. For years, that break was only for people who itemized. Now it is for everyone, and it is permanent.
The TrueCOLA Project is a public charity, so a gift made on this page qualifies. Keep the PayPal receipt. The deduction is for cash gifts, which includes card and PayPal payments, and it does not apply to gifts made through a donor-advised fund. This is general information, not tax advice; your tax preparer can tell you how it applies to you.
Receipts and records
The TrueCOLA Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity, EIN 42-4777818. Contributions are deductible. PayPal emails a receipt for every gift, so keep that email for your tax records. No goods or services are provided in return for a gift.
Read how we handle your information on the privacy page.