February 17, 2012

Friday Cat Blogging – 17 February 2012

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Spring is approaching, and after a bit of rain last weekend the weather has been lovely here in Southern California. On the left, after rolling around in the sun for a while, Domino poses with one of our legion of concrete rabbits. On the right, Inkblot is eating….something. Marian told me what it was last night, but now I’ve forgotten. But to Inkblot it seemed like a nice snack.

As for me, I’ve finished our vacation planning. Hooray! It’s a family affair scheduled for the second half of May, and we’re going to spend a week in Copenhagen visiting friends and then a week in Rome visiting the ruins. It’s the first long vacation Marian and I have taken since 2002, and my mother has never been to Rome. Should be fun.  

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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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