Modifying the Arial material for fading GUITexts

Seems like a really simple problem, but I can't seem to find an answer to this after digging in Unity and searching here for a day or so.

I have a fade script that will fade the alpha of a GUIText prefab. The GUIText is using the Arial default font with NONE as the material.

 public class FadeGUITexts : MonoBehaviour
 {
     public float fadeDuration = 1.0f; 
 
     private void Start () 
     {
         StartCoroutine(StartFading());
     }
 
     private IEnumerator StartFading()
     {
         yield return StartCoroutine(Fade(0.0f, 1.0f, fadeDuration));    // Fade in at start
         //yield return StartCoroutine(Fade(1.0f, 0.0f, fadeDuration));
         //Destroy(gameObject);
     }
  
     private IEnumerator Fade (float startLevel, float endLevel, float time) 
     { 
             float speed = 1.0f/time;     
         
     for (float t = 0.0f; t < 1.0; t += Time.deltaTime*speed) 
     { 
         float a = Mathf.Lerp(startLevel, endLevel, t);
         
         guiText.font.material.color = new Color(guiText.font.material.color.r,     
         guiText.font.material.color.g,     
         guiText.font.material.color.b, a);    
     yield return 0;
     }
 }

This fade script works beautifully, but the problem I am having is that ALL the GUITexts in the scene are fading at the same time because I'm modifying the alpha on the single GUIText material (which is the Arial font material.)

I've tried adding other materials to each GUIText prefab, but anything other than NONE turns the font into gibberish. I don't see any option in the material browser to select the actual ARIAL material or texture for modification.

So, is the Arial font material accessible in some way? Or would I be better served using a different font that generates it's own materials/textures?

Or am I just doing this wrong and shouldn't be trying to modify the material.color directly?

Thanks in advance!