Better Than Facebook, Twitter, and Jeb!

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The long holiday weekend will probably be light on news for me to blog about—no Saturday night Democratic debates this week!—so I figured I’d make another pitch and give you an update on our December fundraising campaign.

As I  wrote a couple weeks ago, Monika and Clara put together an interesting piece on the state of paying for journalism in the digital age and how our model of reader support makes us pretty darn unique. Here’s an excerpt:

December is a really critical fundraising month for nonprofits like us. But, like you, we are kind of tired of the usual gimmicks that get trotted out around this time—HELP! We’ll go dark if you don’t pitch in! It’s actually true (more on that later), but it doesn’t really appeal to your intelligence.

So we had this idea: What if we tried something different? What if we actually showed you how the sausage is made: transparently explaining the challenges of paying for journalism in the digital age and going into detail about how reader support makes Mother Jones possible?

We want you to understand what reader support is—donations of all sizes, subscriptions, even telling your friends about us—and how it fits into our budget. We think being transparent about the challenges publishers face will make it more compelling for you to support Mother Jones. The first step is this December fundraising campaign.

Our target for December is $200,000. If everyone who visits the site this month gives 2.5 cents, we’re done. If everyone who visits today gives 40 cents, we’re done. If 40,000 people—less than 2 percent of our monthly visitors—each give the price of a latte, we’re done.  Are you one of them?

Well, the good news is that they say it seems to be working. I mean, 40,000 people haven’t donated the price of a latte yet—but as of Wednesday afternoon, 2,979 people had donated an average gift of $41.77 (10 lattes?) for a total of $124,428 raised this month. They also say it’s going to be a nail-biter, and we’re quite literally banking on last-minute donations coming in over the next week to get us over the hump.

And this is the part I find really fascinating—understanding how the internet works for fundraising and where all of those donations are coming from. Between my first post and my experiment interjecting some asks into my GOP debate live blog two weeks ago, the good folks who read this page have donated $6,296, or 5 percent of the total. Not too shabby at all.

Emails to our newsletter subscribers are typically the workhorse, and this year they’ve raised 29 percent of the revenue. Not far behind it, the two “donate” links you see at the top of every page have raised 24%, and those “overlay” ads that appear over the top of our articles when you visit the site have raised 21 percent. Monika and Clara’s piece accounts for 16 percent. Those are the big sources of donations. Facebook and Twitter? A bit here and there, but not so much—and not that different than Jeb Bush’s campaign: So full of promise on day one, but stuck in the low single digits.

I’m delighted to know the folks who read this blog donate more than Facebook and the Twitterverse—and the truth is, several of you have probably made donations through one of those other ways listed above. So thanks to everyone who has already donated.

If you haven’t made a tax-deductible, year-end gift yet, please consider doing so now via credit card or PayPal—we don’t want to let Facebook or Twitter catch us, do we?

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

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