MoJo Reader, Time is short, tens of thousands of dollars are at stake, and we're on pins and needles watching the final surge of last-minute year-end donations come in today. It's truly magical, and quite nerve-wracking: running reports every hour, witnessing such a huge outpouring of support for our journalism, and hoping we'll get all the way to the $80,0000 we need TODAY so we can hit our make-or-break December goal. If only we could rally this much support in one day more often! As of about 30 minutes ago, your fellow readers have pitched in $35,000 since this morning's email, below, went out. That's incredible! But it leaves $45,000 we still need to bring in—and based on years past, there's a fighting chance we just might get there if we can muster one final evening surge. If you can right now, please help us finish 2022 as strong as we possibly can and make a much-needed and much-appreciated last-minute year-end donation when your gift will be doubled, and when all-hands-on-deck are needed to help with the final $45,000 we need—tonight. —Monika and Brian |
MoJo Reader, This is it. The biggest day of the year for our online fundraising. We need a whopping $80,000 in year-end donations to come in today to hit our $350,000 goal, and it just might be possible based on the flood of last-minute donations we typically see on December 31. But we can't leave anything to chance, and we need more help than normal to make sure we don't come up short. If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a last-chance year-end donation. Your gift will be doubled and go twice as far until we hit our goal or tonight's midnight (Central time, where our donations are time-stamped) deadline passes. And every dollar matters in our no-frills budget to make our reporting possible. Today especially, we're sure your inbox is already jam-packed with plenty of urgent, "HELP, THE SKY IS FALLING…UNLESS YOU RESPOND" emails, because we get a lot of them too—and it is truly a high-stakes day. But we heard from you that all that noise, and the overwrought tone of so many fundraising emails we all get, is turning you off from supporting causes you believe in. At Mother Jones, we believe in the facts, and so we've been trying a "No Cute Headlines or Manipulative BS" theme in asking you to support Mother Jones this month. And even though we still have a huge $80,000 in year-end donations to raise today, we can't tell how you relieved we are that this matter-of-fact approach has resonated with so many of your fellow readers. We were legitimately freaked out we might come up dramatically short again, like we did in our fall fundraising push, but as long as today is "normal" (and normal, on this day, means huge) we should be damn close. So to close out this critical month, instead of screaming about today's goal and deadline and how important it is that we get there, here are some simple facts and figures about why your donations matter so much today, and always, as you make your final year-end giving decisions—and we respectfully ask you to please (please please please) support Mother Jones if you can right now.
- Being a nonprofit means we can invest time and effort into big, underreported stories that are hard to do if you need to maximize clicks or look out for skittish advertisers. It gives us the independence to call it like we see it. The moment we're in demands as much of that as we can muster.
- The beauty of being supported by readers instead of answering to a corporate parent company or well-heeled investors is that we're not locked into anyone else's idea of what's news. We can go after the stories that most need going after and we can connect the dots and look at the systemic forces and failures behind the headlines. We can do journalism that exists to create change, not (ever-dwindling) shareholder value.
- Mary Harris Jones, known as "Mother Jones," was a badass labor organizer in the early 1900s. She lived at a moment when giant corporations reigned supreme, women couldn't vote, lynchings were routine, and the US government massacred its own people. But like changemakers through the ages, she did not accept things as they were. She was known, in many corner offices of the day, as "the most dangerous woman in America," and creating "the most dangerous magazine in America" is what we have aspired to do since our founding in 1976.
- We often get asked what our top editorial priorities are, and one way to answer that is: democracy, democracy, and democracy. Everything else flows from this. Climate sanity won't prevail, racial and economic justice won't advance, people's right to control their own bodies and marry whom they love won't be safe, if we can't protect and expand democracy. What maximizes traffic or advertising revenue does not drive our editorial decisions.
- 74 percent of our $18.7 million budget comes from donations big and small this year. Nothing else could keep us going. There is no backup, no alternate revenue source, no secret benefactor. If readers don't donate, we won't be here. It's that simple.
- $1.4 million: The amount we need to raise in donations from online readers by June 30 when our current budget ends.
- $80,000—did we mention that?—is the amount we need to raise in donations TODAY to hit our $350,000 December goal and have any chance at getting to the $1.4 million we need in the next six months.
- 100 percent: The amount of your donation to Mother Jones, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, that is tax-deductible.
- 100 percent: The amount of your donation that will be matched by an incredibly generous donor until we hit our goal or the day comes to an end.
- 60 percent: The share of our budget that goes to our biggest expense—paying the journalists and publishing professionals on our staff. (Many people asked what their donations support—this is the answer). Some other line items you might find surprising: Insurance to defend our work against frivolous litigation is up 15 percent, to more than $200,000 this year. The paper we print our magazine on is up more than 50 percent. Shipping is up 15 percent, and software licenses (to run our website, email servers, and such) have increased another 15 percent. And needless to say, the revenue we need to bring in to pay for all this is not going up in this tricky economic climate.
- $0: What we charge to read our journalism online. Keeping our reporting free for everyone has always been central to Mother Jones' mission because we don't believe quality information—or other public services—should only be available for those who can afford it. For 47 years as of tomorrow, enough readers have pitched in so anyone who wants to read our reporting is able to. Kind of incredible, given all the glitzy launches and spectacular failures of news organizations in those intervening decades.
- About 17 hours: The amount of time left to raise the $80,000 in donations we need TODAY before our systems flip over to 2023. (When donations are still needed, to be sure!)
The fundamental truth of it all is this: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never fund the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. And advertising revenue, market forces, or profit-driven ownership groups will never make time-intensive, in-depth reporting viable. Not a day goes by right now without a news organization announcing layoffs or even shutting down. And it's not just our online fundraising that feels particularly precarious this year, which is why we're so concerned about our budgets and donations being strong this month, and why we're so grateful for the Mother Jones community.
The only investors who won't let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.
The only reason Mother Jones is still here, and will be here next year, is you. Corporate America, billionaires, and their fickle dollars come and go. But support from our community of readers has been our rock, and as stressful as it is sweating out the final $80,000 we're banking on coming in today, there's no way we'd rather have it. If you can right now, please make a last-minute year-end donation to support our independent journalism, which is entirely dependent on support from readers. Your contribution will be doubled thanks to an incredibly generous matching gift pledge. Thanks for reading, and happy New Year to you and yours—the two of us can't wait for the clock to strike midnight and for our pressure-cooker of a year-end push to be done…and hopefully successful thanks to a huge surge of last-minute donations from you and so many of your fellow readers. Sincerely, |
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Monika Bauerlein CEO Brian Hiatt Online Membership Director |
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