Mother’s Day Gifts for Do-Gooders

Photo by Flickr user <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mongol/">mngl</a>

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If you’re like me, you a) have a mom who calls to remind you every time PBS airs a documentary about people suffering and b) have not yet sent her a Mother’s Day present because you’re a bad kid. And if that’s the case, you might find it useful to know that a couple of aid organizations are offering inspiring presents for varying prices but all with the option of a nice-looking, instantly deliverable e-card. The International Rescue Committee has a store stocked with life-saving goodies you can donate in your mom’s name, everything from $18 worth of mosquito nets for a whole family to an $87 bicycle to $5,000 for clinic supplies in a war zone. Mercy Corps makes kits, like the Women’s Leadership Kit, which supports programs that educate and train women. I think my favorite is the Camel Kit, which delivers enough vaccinations to protect five camels from camel-killing diseases to herders in Mongolia. If you’re incredibly broke, and/or your mother is really hardcore, Amnesty International has made an electronic Mother’s Day card that says, essentially, “I’m not getting you flowers or breakfast in bed, and you should write a strongly worded letter about maternal health to Department of Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius.” (Or you could send flowers, but from a company that donates to Amnesty.) Either way, we’ve got two days left to get it together.

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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