June 26, 2015

And Now For Something Completely Different


A new1 study from Swift, Stone, and Parker has identified the top four components of a successful online fundraising appeal. Here they are:

  • The end of a quarterly fundraising cycle.
  • Clear comparisons to the opposition’s fundraising results.
  • Over the top doomsaying.
  • Cats.

Lucky for me, I’ve got all those things, so I figured I’d take a crack at it.

Check out National Review’s current fundraising drive. One reader just gave $250! This guy coughed up $100! They’ve even got a wine club to suck in new contributors. And a cruise!

These guys are killing us. Without your help, the heirs of William F. Buckley will dominate the political magazine market for years to come. And you know what that means: More articles about how the only real racism is anti-white racism. More pseudo-science about how the globe is probably cooling, not warming. More hagiographies of Marco Rubio. More whining about how white people can’t use the N-word. More blog posts about Jonah Goldberg’s dog.

Maybe you think this doesn’t matter to you? Think again. This week features “Reagan’s Supply-Side Genius,” and it doesn’t matter if you try to ignore it. Your crazy uncle is going to be regaling you about it for hours this Thanksgiving unless you figure out how to fight back.

This blog is your ticket. We need contributions to help us fight back against the avalanche of right wing babble. Right. Now.

This is our final push. My cats are down to their last bowl of kibble. The fell hordes of NR are already cackling at their imminent victory. Soon we won’t be able to afford the very pixels that make up this blog. I know you don’t want that. So please, make a generous contribution today. The first $10 will go to cat food.2 The rest will go to fighting the dark hordes. And Jonah’s dog.

OK, I’m joking around here. But we really are closing out our fiscal year next week and Mother Jones can use all the help we can get. If you can afford to pitch in, please do—so I never have to write a fundraising appeal like this and actually mean it.

Make a tax-deductible gift by credit card here.

Or via PayPal here.

1: See the Annals of Improbably Convenient Results, v. 83, p. 101.
2: Just kidding. The cats already have a bottomless supply. Your full donation will go towards MoJo’s hard-hitting journalism that gets people talking. Like our groundbreaking package, “The True Costs of Gun Violence in America,” that President Obama alluded to in the wake of Charleston. 

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.

payment methods

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.

payment methods

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