MoJo Reader,
We'll get right to the point: We need to raise $165,000 in online donations by next week, when, no matter where we are, we're going to stop harping on our $300,000 fundraising goal.
It's going to come down to the wire, and it's going to take a huge surge in donations to have any chance of getting there and being able to finish our fiscal year without making cuts in the coming months.
The reality is that we need to start raising significantly more in donations from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in (or stopped doing so several years ago) because you figured others always will. Whether you can give $5 or $50, it all matters and makes a difference when added up with your fellow readers.
Rallying $300,000 in just three weeks is a tall order—and more than we hoped we'd need to bring in right now—but it is still 100 percent possible to get there. In fact, if just 10 percent of the people reading this right now decided to pitch in, we'd blow that $165,000 need out of the water and be close to the break-even number we're so anxious about that comes due on June 30.
Will be you one of ten and help keep Mother Jones charging hard with a donation today?
There's another, related question that the two of us have been grappling with of late: How can we best communicate the urgency of our fundraising goals without crying wolf?
It's easy for fundraising to make it sound like things are about to fall off a cliff, and readers straight up told us that you're overwhelmed by all of the fundraising requests you're bombarded with around the internet—the sheer volume of ads and emails, the overwrought tone, the manipulative BS. We are too!
So in "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why steady support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going.
Is our budget reality a crisis for Mother Jones? It undeniably feels that way more often than it used to.
And the bottom line is this: It is always legitimately urgent that we hit our online fundraising goals.
We've already cut expenses and reaching our $300,000 goal is critical to finishing our year break-even in the coming months. If you can right now, please join the group of readers who also pitch in and support our work—and remember, just 10 percent of you reading this right now deciding to pitch in would be utterly transformative.
We urgently need to see a major uptick in giving starting today because we're committed to stopping our short fundraising push next week, and we truly cannot afford to come up short right now.
Thanks for reading, and for everything you do to make Mother Jones what it is.
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