October 3, 2008

Sarah Palin: Not a Charitable Conservative?

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On Friday afternoon, the McCain-Palin camp released the last two years of Sarah Palin’s taxes. (Only the last two?) The campaign’s summary notes that Sarah and Todd Palin had a gross income of $166,080 in 2007, her first year as governor. The couple donated $2500 to charity that year and also made “non-cash” donations of $825. This represented 1.5 percent of their adjusted gross income.

The average American donates about 3.1 percent of his or her income to charity. Many churches recommend tithing 10 percent.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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