April 12, 2017

Lunchtime Photo

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Baby Canada Geese are coming our way here in Irvine, but only if Mama Goose can keep her nest warm and protected. Yesterday, a villainous maintenance man in a motorboat swung by with the obvious intent of stealing her eggs. But she knew how to foil his fiendish plot: get up on a rock and honk loudly at him. It worked. He sped away, terror-stricken at the prospect of continued honking.

Here she is making her way back down to her nest. It turns out that webbed feet are not so good at scaling rocks, so she ended up sort of half-flying down. Then, after moving a few feathers from one side to another and squooshing around a bit to get comfortable, she settled down to a serene morning of eggsitting.

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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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