politicnewsbusterinsiderpostreview: "Bless you and hang in there."

MoJo Reader,

I hope you'll bear with me for one more week of trying my best to muster the donations it takes to keep Mother Jones charging hard.

The truth is, I wish I didn't have to send this email today. And I'm going to keep it focused on what I've heard from the MoJo community, because the last one we sent, a powerful story from one of our incredible reporters, didn't resonate all that much on Saturday morning. Dang.

So I spent Saturday night getting caught up on more of your heartfelt and helpful advice after my update from a week ago, about how our fall fundraising push is struggling like never before: Three-plus weeks into it, we're just one-third of the way to our $325,000 goal.

For starters, you confirmed my hunch that everyone is overwhelmed by donation requests right now. So am I: James Carville alone has five emails in my inbox as I write on Saturday, on top of four from Friday—23 total the last week. And a congressional candidate in a race thousands of miles away sends me texts every day.

Another thing your responses confirmed is that it's not just Mother Jones that is confronting financial challenges. So many readers have shared your lean budgets and hard choices with me, like I do with you. I really appreciate the trust. "I have a daughter who is struggling and my fixed income has just what we need right now," "I am retired and the value of my invested savings has declined by about 35 percent this year."

A lot of folks shared that they are understandably giving anything they can to "candidates fighting raving fascist lunatics," "local charities that feed the hungry, house the homeless," or GoFundMe pages for friends and family who are dealing with crises that our health care system is not equipped to handle.

It's almost like we have any economy that only really works for the 0.01 percent.

And I truly wish I could heed the readers who wisely suggested we "try again after the election." I promise our next fundraising campaigns will stay well clear of big elections, but right now we have bills to pay and reporting projects to keep going, and however much we might come up short by now is money I have to try making up before too long. So I need to do my best to get as close to our $325,000 budget as we possibly can—and honestly, rallying $150,000 in donations this week to finish around $275,000 would be a big relief. Please help if you can.

There's some other advice readers gave that really resonated with me, and I thought it might resonate with you in making the case for a donation if you can help us finish this campaign the best we can:

"I'm a really politically engaged person and I don't want to read about politics right now. I want to see more stories about how investigative journalism got someone justice, helped the little people. I want more stories about people and communities getting it right, coming together, doing good things. I want stories about how ordinary grassroots people can get things done and make change. We are starving for hope."

YES!! I thought when I read that, this happens so often and we really don't talk about it enough. Just the other day, I met an organizer who told me that after he read in Mother Jones about how Seattle has adopted "democracy vouchers"—a campaign reform measure that lets people allocate public funds to counter the influence of dark money—his group was inspired to propose the same measure for their city. And not only that, a national organization for progressive legislators is looking at circulating it around the country.

And that big criminal justice investigation we shared on Saturday—it is having so many ripple effects as legislators around the country write to our reporter, Samantha, to get more information because they want to fix these cruel practices targeting women of color. The most inspiring one to me, though, was from a graduate student who decided to work toward creating writing workshops for incarcerated women, "teaching them how to be writing tutors, to teach one another, and advocate for themselves on the page," and convinced a magazine serving English teachers to help share their stories.

Those are a few top-of-mind examples, and we're really thinking about how we can better lift-up more stories of hope and change that we all need.

"Perhaps you can be specific about what gifts will do to keep Mother Jones afloat."

Our financials are available here: Donations pay salaries and let us pursue ambitious reporting projects and fearless investigations. But some other line-items that you might find surprising: Insurance to defend our work when needed is up 15 percent, to more than $200,000 this year; The paper we print our magazine on is up more than 80 percent; Postage and shipping is up 15 percent. I could go on, but the bottom line is, donations do everything to keep MoJo afloat: They're not an add-on as in some places, but the lifeblood of the organization, making up 70 percent of our current budget. We literally wouldn't exist without support from readers.

"Another alternative is to charge $15 per year for an online subscription and stop giving it away for free."

I certainly think Mother Jones' journalism is worth $15 a year—and yet I hope it never comes to this. Keeping our reporting free for everyone has always been central to Mother Jones' mission because we don't believe quality information—or access to other public services—should only be available for those who can afford it. And for 46 years now, enough readers have pitched in so anyone who wants to read our reporting is able to.

"If there are links you could provide me to help me understand how a news organization like yours can be nonprofit and what makes you different, I would appreciate knowing that."

Are you my mom? Because this feels like someone who knows how much I love talking about this planted the question. But most people reading this won't have as much patience for me as mom does, so I'll be brief:

1) Being a nonprofit is the ONLY way to make sure deep, investigative reporting can happen, because advertising and even subscriptions can't sustain it on their own. At one point MoJo's editor in chief, Clara Jeffery, and I wrote about the cost of our private prison investigation ($350,000) and how much advertising money it brought in ($5,000) to illustrate this. More here, here, here, and here; 2) Specifically for Mother Jones, being accountable only to our readers means billionaire owners or Wall Street investors can't hold us back (or tell us to focus more on crosswords and recipes, as much as we love cooking); 3) Being funded by readers lets us get out ahead of important stories before they're in the headlines, and allows us to look at the systemic forces and failures behind the headlines once the rest of the media catches up.

If you have questions like these, or any ideas about how we can better go about asking for your support, please let me know. I'll let one of your fellow readers make today's final pitch for a donation if you can help us out right now:

"Reach out to folks who read the New York Times, Washington Post, and Guardian and impress upon them how MoJo supplements the reports from those other organizations. I subscribe to and read them and find MoJo's focus on social justice to be unique. MoJo identifies and gives voice to the people adversely impacted by the lies/misinformation. It's important to follow the news, but it's vital to understand the impact of the news on people. Other news organizations feed the mind. MoJo supports the heart and soul of America."

That just blew me away—it puts into 14 beautiful words exactly what, in my heart, I aspire for Mother Jones to do. So let me close with a wish back to all of you, at a time when it can be exhausting opening your email or following any news site out there. It's what another reader wrote to me: "Bless you and hang in there."