August 27, 2009

Breakfast of Champions

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England will be sending four clubs to compete in the European Champions League tournament, which begins group play next month.  Matchups were announced today, and apparently the topic on everybody’s mind is whether they have to play anyone more than 90 minutes away:

Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez: “The important thing as always is that the travelling isn’t too bad. We don’t have too far to go for any of the games.”

Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon: “There isn’t a lot of travel, though, so we have to be reasonably pleased with the draw.”

Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis: “It is good to have relatively short travel times, that’s something that Arsene (Wenger) thinks about a lot.”

Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson: “These are difficult ties, especially the trips to Russia and Turkey.”

Seriously?  Anything more than a 2-hour plane ride is supposed to be a major drain on these guys?  Are they flying RyanAir or something?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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