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Hi there,
We need your help to get Tone Madison through the fall.
Between overhead, salaries, and compensation for our freelancers, we’ll need $30,000 to make it to December. Without those funds, we won’t be able to publish the same thoughtful, provocative culture and politics coverage for Madison that you are used to. This has been a year like no other for this publication, full of new opportunities and new problems. We have a solid plan to survive and thrive in the long run—but right now, our sights are set on surviving the short-term, and we need your help.
For this short-term campaign, we are asking our readers to help us raise $10,000. A few generous folks in our audience have contributed to a matching fund that gives us a good start toward our goal, so know that other folks already have skin in the game with you. We hope to raise the rest of the $30,000 through new sponsorships.
How did we get here? Well, we grew at a modest pace and built up our capacity. Right now, we bring in most of our money directly from you, the audience. We also spend most of our money—84 percent, to be exact—on what matters, payroll and freelance pay, affording people the time and support their work requires. As a result, we've been able to publish even more work this year, all of it free to read. More people are reading it, too, but to be honest, we haven't seen the same growth in financial support. We're glad you're enjoying what we publish (because we love writing and editing it), so if you want to read more of our stuff, we really need your support.
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When I say that we're a lean and tiny publication, consider all the stories, newsletters, events, and other projects you see from Tone Madison. They all depend on us making very careful use of finite resources. In 2021, the whole damn thing that is Tone Madison cost just shy of $60,000 to run. In that time, we published 298 stories. So far in 2022, we have published 252. Sometimes we had a deep piece of reporting to share, sometimes we just followed our strange and joyful whims. We like both extremes equally. Based on the traffic numbers, you do too.
So if you, as readers, don't chip in, none of this functions. At all. If you enjoy our work (hell, if you hate our work—admit it, you'd kinda miss us), and you've never donated, please know what we really do mean you when we say we need your help, that we rely on you. There's a lot of you out there! If even, say, 15 percent of you who read Tone Madison can make a small recurring donation, $10 or $15 a month, our future will be a lot more secure.
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Here is how these donations literally, directly impact our ability to do what we do:
- If you and a friend are each giving $10 per month, then over the course of the year your contribution makes a reported feature possible.
- If you're feeling flush and you give us a one-time donation of $400, you just covered a couple weeks of working hours for one of our industrious part-time staff editors.
- If you and some other person you don't even know each give us $50 a couple times a year, you enable us to commission more of our wonderful editorial illustrations.
If you're just not in a place to give money, we still want you to be able to read our work, and you can help us by subscribing to our newsletter or just spreading the word to people you know.
Thanks for reading,
Scott Gordon, editor and publisher
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